


Deathtaker, Lifegiver

by Signel_chan



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Broken Families, Car Accidents, Child Death, F/M, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Minor Character Death, Pregnancy, Resurrection, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-21
Updated: 2020-05-11
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:08:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 37,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23247535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Signel_chan/pseuds/Signel_chan
Summary: Within Maki's body flows a power that allows her to restore life to someone who has died, at a steep cost that she uses to her advantage in some instances, or despises in others. Living with this power wouldn't be so bad, if the person she desired so much wasn't someone she'd previously aided with her gift.
Relationships: Harukawa Maki/Momota Kaito
Comments: 3
Kudos: 25





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [elephant_bubbles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elephant_bubbles/gifts).



> I have never seen or read anything with this concept, but I have heard enough people talking about the media they've consumed with it that I decided I'd give it a shot! <3

Slipping through the alleyways of the night like she was avoiding being caught, Maki had only one place in mind that she needed to get to: a rumored meeting of high-level mafia men who she’d crossed paths with a time or two. As she thought about the men and their ugly faces and attitudes, her hand wrapped its way around the hilt of her katana—a sword she carried simply for intimidation tactics that evening. She knew that she couldn’t properly kill a man with the sword, but she didn’t need any weapon at all to defend herself if the men she’d been told were meeting were, in fact, who she knew them to be. That katana was the only thing even remotely similar to a weapon she carried on her, no further blades or guns or traps hidden anywhere on her body.

While approaching the supposed meeting place, her pace slowed down tremendously, not wanting to alert anyone to her presence with a wrong move. She’d been out of work as an assassin for years, ever since she’d aged out of the orphanage system and the men who’d employed her couldn’t use funding to keep her in their grasp, but on occasion she’d pay some of her targets visits to remind them that she still had the power over them. Most of her former targets were still dead in the ground, but the ones that had repented their sins while believing they were staring death in the eyes got a second lease on life. That was why she didn’t need a real weapon on her that night, she knew that the men she was checking up on were reformed enough to not need her to bring them to mercy once more, and if they had decided they weren’t going to play by her rules, she had her own way to keep them from committing any more crimes.

The building was an old warehouse, unguarded even though there were mafiosos inside, and Maki was able to get inside quietly and with ease. She weaved her way through the empty crates that were still stored there, beginning to hear voices that she recognized, the sound of their gruff words bringing a deep scowl to her face. Dealing with scum of the earth was never anything she enjoyed doing, but if she was making things better for the overall population she could look past the game of life and death she was playing. Once she was able to properly hear the men’s conversation, she froze in her place, sidling up to a crate to make herself as small as possible and avoid being seen if anyone dared to come look for her.

Their conversation was about funds and how to illegally funnel them from one account to another, because the person who owned the originating account owed them quite a few debts that needed paying. If someone was making deals with the mafia then they tended to be in a really bad spot, and the sound of the men trying to manipulate someone who’d needed a bit of help made Maki’s grip tighten on her katana. She couldn’t just jump into their conversation and put a stop to things, especially not if the men didn’t recognize her, but she also couldn’t stand by idly and let them talk about such disgusting things like they were appropriate courses of action.

Her entrance into the scene was to dash around the crate, katana pulled from its holder and being brandished in front of her while she glared at the men. “What’s this about criminal deeds?” she asked, her voice fake-sweet and contrasting immensely with the appearance she was giving off. “I thought you two were going to change your ways, not use your second chance at life to keep being assholes.”

Both men were looking at her from the second they’d heard her footsteps approaching them, and neither of them had anything to say to her, their expressions matching each other’s with the jaw slightly dropping and their faces beginning to go pale. “So you recognize me, I get it,” she continued, lowering the sword slightly to look less intimidating (although a tiny woman being intimidating to the two burly men felt laughable), “but that doesn’t excuse you still being pieces of shit to others. What happened to begging me for mercy, that you’d never get involved with the mafia again?”

“That was just talk!” one of the men barked, before motioning towards her, the other man taking his lead and charging at her. She rolled her eyes, threw her katana aside and held out a hand in front of her, which connected with the outstretched hand of the man trying to go for her neck. The second their fingers brushed together the man fell cold to the floor, the life in his body having been zapped with just a tiny touch, and the man who’d commanded for him to make that charge was left stammering and looking for a way out of the situation.

Looking down at the dead man at her feet, Maki shook her head and gave a dramatic sigh. “I tried warning you when I brought you back that any further touches meant you die, but I guess no one believed me.” She kicked the man’s shoulder, feeling his rigid and stiff body underneath the sole of her shoe, as her eyes came back up to look towards the other man, who was stumbling backwards, trying to get away from her and her life-bending powers.

The last thing she heard come from his lips was an apology and a promise that he wouldn’t take an innocent man’s money, and then he was gone. That left her alone with a corpse, which she ignored the second she could, retrieving her katana and heading back home without much fanfare. This life wasn’t what she’d asked for, but it was what she was given, and she made the best of things every day she could. Her ability was what had made her such a good assassin, being able to kill someone, bring them back to have them make amends in any way possible, then kill them a second time without any effort on her part. As long as they’d never died before, she could physically interact with someone all she wanted, but the second they’d died once and she touched them, they’d be alive like nothing had happened, but so much as a tiny brush of bare skin between her and them would end with them dead once again, with no chance of a second revival.

Well, actually, she knew that to be untrue, as she personally knew someone else who could raise the dead, but their services required heavy sacrifices and it was a burden to them to do the task. So as far as most people knew, there was just one lifegiver, one deathtaker, who was resented by both the heavens and hell and any divine beings between them for their talent, and that was Maki. Ever since she’d aged out of the orphanage, her ability hadn’t been as much of a problem as it was when she was younger, because she wasn’t frequently being faced with people on death’s door that needed to be revived, or men that she’d killed and had to bring back so they could face someone else’s justice. She still frequently found herself relying on her skill to help others, but it had become less problematic in her adult years overall, and for that she was thankful enough.

There _were_ still some serious issues with the talent, though, and she knew she had to deal with those on a daily basis. Those issues were what had brought her to her current situation, doing vigilante work in the night while living with a pair of detectives during the day, but she was hopeful that soon enough, things would start changing for the better for the three of them, one way or another. If she’d known what “the better” would entail for any of them, she may not have been so wishful about things, but as far as she was aware, the only way her life could get better from its current spot would be being able to move into a different house without her roommates being the people asking her to bring back the dead so that they could investigate their crimes further.

She got back to the house she was sharing with the others not longer after her brush with the mafia men, unlocking the door without any issue and stepping inside a completely dark house, neither of her roommates still awake. Once the door was properly locked behind her, she put the katana back on the shelf where she’d taken it from (it was a decorative piece, not even worthy of being used as a weapon, which was why she carried it when she was doing check-ins) and headed towards her room. That was when she saw a crack of light underneath a closed bedroom door, and her heart began racing when she heard that there were people—plural people—talking on the other side.

It wasn’t that she wasn’t fond of her roommates having guests over without her knowing about it beforehand, but rather that she knew the guests that she could hear and her instant reaction to their voices was to want absolutely nothing to do with them. One of the voices, the softer one that she didn’t hear as much as the others, belonged to the man who lived in the room, but the other two were possessed by people she was trying to limit her interactions with; they were _great_ people, they really were, but the problem with Maki’s talent of bringing the dead back to life was that she knew an awful lot of people who’d met untimely ends that she’d reversed, and those two were two such individuals.

Still, she couldn’t exactly let there be a social gathering in the room next to hers without her giving a reminder that they needed to shut up and let her sleep. Her knock on the door caused shuffling on the other side, and when it opened it was Shuichi standing there, looking down at her with a sheepish look on his face. “Right, I know why you’re here,” he said, trying to put on a smile but only managing to look pained, “but we’ve got to get these things worked out at some point and I thought that—”

“I don’t care,” she snapped, watching him flinch at the harshness of her words. “It’s after midnight, shouldn’t you be quieter in here? All three of you?” Even though she couldn’t see the others, she knew they were both just out of view, one on an air mattress on the floor and the other in Shuichi’s bed, a common set-up since the detective had moved into the house he currently lived in. Maki could easily remember when things were different and she’d be invited into the group sleepovers, but those days were long gone and she could only grimace at the memory of them. “I’m sure you’re so excited to be able to live together again but leave me out of it and let me sleep.” “—right, sorry about this, Maki.” Rather than leave things right there and call the conversation over, Shuichi came outside his room, closing the door behind him despite the protesting calls from the others. “Look, I know that having them here is painful but can’t you be a bit nicer about it? That’s my girlfriend and my best friend in there, and you know how much they mean to me.”

“Oh, trust me when I say I know all-too-well, and you know how much they _meant_ to me before everything happened.” Maki put a hand on Shuichi’s shoulder, her fingers digging into his bony frame and making him squirm under her palm. “I’m not saying that you shouldn’t be bringing them here, but I am saying that you should’ve thought better about it before you did it.”

He nodded, tears beginning to brim in his eyes from how her fingernails were getting dangerously close to breaking his skin, even through his shirt. “I’ll make sure we’re extra quiet then, so you don’t have to hear their voices. Will that make things easier for you?”

“It might,” she replied, letting go of him only to push that same shoulder back into the door he stood in front of as she stormed down the hall to her own room. She could hear him calling apologies until his door opened and he went back inside to the others, but she honestly couldn’t care at all about how sorry he was. There was a huge sacrifice someone with death-reversing powers had to make, and that was losing contact with people they cared about when they saved them from a grim fate. She couldn’t fault Shuichi for maintaining relationships with the duo, they were pretty great people and she’d enjoyed them both when she’d been able to, but now that they were living zombies to her, it was best that she stayed far away.

The first one that came to mind, the one that she could forgive more than the other, was Shuichi’s girlfriend Kaede, who had only recently been brought back to life. It was a horrible incident that had led to her dying, a planned attack while she was on stage at a piano concert, and with how many people had watched her get gunned down by precision-aimed fire it was a miracle that there weren’t more questions about how she’d survived the direct attack on her. Some people had asked, certainly, but the news had reported her revival as an act of some benevolent god, and many would know that to mean someone with the power of life and death stored in their hands. By no means should Maki have been able to get up on the stage in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, but her assassin skills had proven themselves to be handy in reviving Kaede before she was carted away and pronounced permanently deceased.

She could vividly remember the blood drying up, the wounds healing themselves instantly at a single touch to already-clammy skin, Kaede’s eyes coming open and her first words being a question about what had happened to her. She’d known Maki long enough to know about her ability to reverse death, and when she found out it had been used on her she’d known how to make sure that she didn’t accidentally cause herself to drop dead once more. Their friendship was strained from that moment on, but they were still amicable towards one another even if they couldn’t so much as brush fingers without lasting consequences.

The other one was the tricky one, because so much of Maki’s own heart had been sacrificed in making the decision to bring Kaito back that seeing his goofy face, his bright smile and his shining eyes, made her regret ever choosing to save him. He’d been her best friend and first crush, and between them and Shuichi they were one of the most recognizable groups their school had ever known, always at each other’s sides and hanging out every moment possible. It was the year before they graduated that Kaito had gotten incredibly sick, missing weeks of school without any explanation as to where he was, and when he came back he was a different person entirely, barely able to walk between classes without needing assistance (but refusing it because he insisted he was fine). In secret he told Maki and Shuichi what was going on with him, swearing them to silence on the matter and never letting anyone know that what was wrong was terminal, because he’d had a plan to guarantee his survival.

“I’m gonna die from this lung bullshit, and I know it,” he said, the words never leaving Maki’s mind despite the years that had passed since they’d been said, “and that’s why I’m making sure that I’ve got Maki Roll at my side when it happens, so that no one else knows that I’m dyin’. It’s what I’ve decided on, so you can’t change my mind!” His voice had been so feeble even though his words were radiating pride, and true to what he’d said it was impossible to make him see the error of his ways and make him rethink that choice.

In the end, he’d gotten what he wanted, her by his side as he choked to death on his own blood, and the second his heart had stopped beating she restarted it with a shaky touch of her fingers to his lips, deeming a kiss too risky in case it lasted too long and he died once more. Being able to bring him back was power she wished she’d never had to use on him in specific, because of how much she secretly loved him, but in the time immediately following the revival she had to start distancing herself from him. Gone were the days of idle shoulder-bumps that led to him lifting her up and carrying her around, because they couldn’t risk the skin contact, and gone were the days of group sleepovers at Shuichi’s uncle’s house, because being too close to Kaito made Maki’s entire body ache with desire. She _loved_ him so much, and she’d resigned herself to never getting him because he’d technically died, and the fact that Shuichi had maintained a great friendship with him the whole time felt like a slap across her face every day.

But that wasn’t something she could bring up with her friend, not without sounding like she despised their friendship that she couldn’t be part of without potentially losing someone forever. This was the downside to the ability she’d been gifted, and while most of the time that downside could be overlooked, that just wasn’t possible when it came to Kaito (and Kaede, to a smaller extent), and she hated it. She hated hearing his joyful laughter, seeing that face that she adored so dearly, being addressed by a voice that was the only way the person speaking was going to be touching her. If she could, she would trade her life-giving power for spending all the time in the world with Kaito, and she wouldn’t regret that decision even slightly. That was just how much she wanted to be with him, a fact that she and she alone knew.

In her room, where no one could see the pain she felt by knowing those two were in an adjoining space, Maki closed her eyes and took in a deep breath, her hand idly reaching towards her chest and curling into a fist over her heart. Romance was stupid, feelings were dumb, and being in love with someone she’d brought back to life and therefore couldn’t touch was a pain she’d never wish on even the nastiest of people. “I should’ve told him they had to leave,” she grumbled, her fist growing tighter. “Tonight’s just not a night I want to be dealing with this.”

When morning came whoever owned that warehouse would stumble upon a corpse that had been long dead, even though it had been walking the earth hours before, and she was the one responsible for it. No one would ever know that she’d killed yet another person, it would remain anonymous and even if she was somehow attached to it, how would it be seen as her doing something wrong? The man had charged at her even though he should have known touching her would have fatal consequences, and it wasn’t like she could control how her power worked. Skin-on-skin contact after revival was means for death, that was what she told everyone she brought back the second they regained consciousness, and failure to heed her warning would be the end of them.

As she lay herself in bed, the thoughts of the man she’d killed intertwining with the thoughts of the two twenty-somethings over in Shuichi’s room that she’d brought back to life, Maki began to wonder if there was a way to pursue relationships with the dead she’d revived that wouldn’t end in heartbreak and a second death. There had to be some solid workaround to her power, otherwise her existence was meant to be lonely—and it was in the last moments before sleep overtook her mind that a potential method to maintaining friendships (or more) crossed her mind for the first time.

It would take a lot of trust and hoping for the best, but if it worked, she might be able to find herself bumping shoulders with her former friends once more.

* * *

She brought the idea up while sitting at the desk at the detective agency where she worked with her current roommates, bored out of her mind as she waited for something exciting to happen in the world around them. “What if I touched someone while, say, wearing a glove, do you think that’d kill them?” she suggested, getting the attention of both detectives in one go while they’d been working on paperwork for cases. “I’m not saying I’m planning on doing it, I was just thinking, what if I did?”

“It’d make two of us who wear gloves on the regular, I suppose,” Kyoko replied, her typically serious expression not fading even with the suddenness of the question. “Of course, yours would be worn to save others, while mine are…ahem, the point is, I think it would mean less questions for me if you were doing the same.”

“You’re not planning on testing this on anyone we know, are you?” Shuichi asked, his eyes growing wide at the prospect of Maki using either of his close friends as bait for her idea. “I get that you want to be able to have friends, but maybe risking someone’s life for it isn’t the best idea.”

“They wouldn’t be alive if it wasn’t for me, if they’re not stingy they’ll let me have this chance.” Feeling rude to word it in such a self-centered way, Maki considered apologizing and giving her suggestion a second, different shot, but she stopped herself when she realized that she was allowed to be self-centered about this. A lot of her life was spent doing things for the best of others without regard to her own ideals and wants, so now that she had something her heart so strongly desired she wasn’t going to let go of it until she was able to give it its proper opportunity. “If I can touch someone with my hands covered, think of the possibilities. Think of what else I’d be able to do.”

Grimacing as he did as instructed and thought about her words, Shuichi ended up shaking his head in disagreement. “I’m sorry, Maki, but all I can think of is _someone_ taking it as an invitation to touch you however he wants and finding himself dead again anyway. You should know that trying this will end in someone dying, because they want more than you can give them.”

“Oh, that sounds like you have someone in specific in mind,” Kyoko said with a tiny smirk, glancing towards Maki and how she was biting her bottom lip to keep herself from blurting out anything incriminating. “I’m not going to ask names, but perhaps it would be one of our visitors from the other night?” Neither of the people she was with said a word, which all but answered her question, and so she felt correct to continue with, “I do want to agree with Shuichi and assume that whoever this mystery gentleman is, he won’t be able to hold himself to not touching you unless given somewhere safe, but at the same time, you do know that there are other workarounds if that worst-case scenario does happen.”

“I’m not asking anyone else to bring him back if he dies a second time, that’s on him for being a moron,” Maki replied, before realizing what she’d said and grumbling something at herself under her breath. She knew that talking this out with two detectives, one of which was best friends with the guy in question, would result in her having to come to terms with her lingering affection for a formerly-dead man, but she hadn’t expected to be the one to admit it to everyone. She’d assumed the process of revealing the information would be long and drawn out, with them having to pry her mouth open to get her to speak. “I…mean, that’s on him for ignoring me.”

“If you spoke to Kaito again, he wouldn’t ignore you, I can promise you that.” Speaking with confidence, as if he’d thought about this scenario before it was presented to him, Shuichi’s eyes looked to Maki to see her visibly shrinking away at the mention of the man’s name, which only proved that he’d known who she was talking about. “He misses what you used to have, back when we were all friends and could hang out without problems. Ever since you did what he wanted and brought him back, he’s wanted to spend time with you.”

“To what? Thank me for giving him a second life?”

Once again Shuichi shook his head, while Kyoko stopped what she’d been doing to watch and listen intently. “I mean, I can’t say that wouldn’t be part of it, but he wants to spend time with you because, uh, he thinks you’re a great person. Which really is a codeword for he thinks you’re hot and likes you almost as much as you like him.”

“Is my affection for him really that obvious?” Cue both of them telling her that they were able to read her feelings on her face, and that she’d never once been able to keep any sort of romantic interest in the man to herself just by the way she acted towards him. “Ugh, that’s the last thing I wanted to hear! He has to know how I feel, huh?”

“He’s known for a long time, Maki.” Shuichi punctuated his statement with a cough, which he had attempted to make muffle his words but failed at doing so, making Maki’s face turn red with embarrassment at what was being discussed. “Did you really think he didn’t know that you ever liked him? Because I can tell you that that’s why he wanted you to bring him back to life, so that he could…you know, have a chance with you.” That was where he stopped, noticing that Kyoko was paying way too much attention to what was being said, and so he hastily finished with, “I don’t know why he thought that would work, but he did and it hasn’t so far.”

“Because I’m a total moron about things, I get it.” Banging her fist against her forehead, Maki thought about how long she’d been giving Kaito the cold shoulder to keep him safe, thinking that she was better off distancing herself from him than anything else. Had she known how he felt she might have thought about making things work sooner, and even though it was assuring to know that he still did like her, she was worried that she was going to be trying too little, too late. “So what do I do now? Try the glove thing? Do you think Kaito can actually be mature enough to make that work?”

“That would depend on how far you want to take things,” Kyoko cut in, slowly pulling one of her gloves off to expose the charred and scarred skin underneath the fabric. Her abilities rested solely in her hands, whereas Maki’s were on any patch of skin that was visible, and Kyoko made it a point to not use her talent unless absolutely necessary because of its personal drawback. Just like Maki couldn’t touch anyone who had been risen, Kyoko couldn’t either, because her hands would begin to burn and wherever she’d initially touched the formerly deceased would do the same, the scent of smoldering flesh filling the immediate area right away.

The power to play with life and death came at such steep costs, and the fact that two of the deathtakers were close enough to be roommates was astounding, but it meant that they could be there for each other when it came to figuring out what to do about their lives. “I think I’ll stick to keeping my hands clear,” Maki decided as she watched Kyoko put her glove back on with a smile. “But I…can’t just keep leaving Kaito out of my life like this, do you know how jealous I get when I hear Shuichi talking to him?”

“Do you know how jealous he gets when he hears me talking to you?” Shuichi shot back, before realizing what kind of behavior they were beginning to condone. “Look, if you want to talk to him again that’s fine, I just don’t want you to accidently make him die a second time. That’d be the worst, for all of us.”

“Trust me, I know that it’d be worst, thanks.” If Maki could do something to make sure that she wouldn’t manage to hurt Kaito if they began speaking again, she would do it in a heartbeat, but there just weren’t any logical options she could take. Her powers were too different from Kyoko’s to make her method work, and she wasn’t familiar with the specific abilities and precautions any other deathtaker used to keep a social life. Besides, she’d always been used to being alone and isolated in her youth, so it shouldn’t have ever been so hard to go back to living that life.

But her heart still yearned to talk to Kaito again, and even though she tried to play it off as if she wasn’t interested in potentially ruining his life, she was desperate to find a way to make things work out. Even if it was for one final conversation before casting him off forever (in a social sense, she wasn’t considering killing him and denying everyone else of his presence), she wanted to make something happen. Eventually she broke down and talked to her roommates about it a second time, Kyoko staying silent as she smirked at hearing Maki’s desperation and Shuichi’s hesitance at letting anything happen, but they came to the decision that as long as the conversation happened in some way that they could see each other, but had no chance of touching each other, that would be fair enough.

That was where the planning ended, and Maki was told that things would happen as they needed whenever possible, which wasn’t a good enough answer for her but she wasn’t going to press the issue. She noticed, right away, that her time spent at the house seemed to be filled with only the other people who lived there, and occasionally a couple of Kyoko’s friends who had never tasted death and therefore were safe to be around. Shuichi was home just as often as always, but he wasn’t inviting Kaito or Kaede over anymore, and Maki was too ashamed of how things had worked out to ask him what was up with that.

The knock that came at her window one night a few weeks later jolted her away from a light sleep, and she was so angry that she first reached for the pocket knife she kept at her bedside table before she got up to see what was going on. “I’ll murder whoever’s out there,” she muttered, flipping out the sharpest blade on her knife and pulling open her curtains, gasping when she saw who was standing on the other side.

Kaito’s wave was overshadowed by the grin on his face, although both were barely visible in the dark of night. Unsure of why he was there, Maki threw the knife at her bed, it stabbing the wall above where she usually slept, and she opened the window, the only barrier between herself and Kaito now the screen on her window. “Boy am I glad this is your window and not Kyoko’s, I don’t know how well she’d handle such a late wake-up call,” he said with a laugh, coming closer to the window screen. “But how’s it goin’, Maki Roll? Feels like it’s been forever since we talked.”

“How’s it going? That’s what you’re going to ask me? Aren’t you afraid I’m going to kill you right now?” Her words were masking how excited she was to see him there, even if he was mostly shrouded in darkness—even turning her bedroom light on didn’t do much to illuminate his darkened form. “You’re crazy, Kaito. You’re actively playing with death.”

“Sure I am, but why does that matter? I heard from someone that you wanted to talk to me, and so I’m here, talkin’ to ya. Isn’t that the important thing?” Of course coming up with plans had been abruptly stopped when Shuichi had decided to go rogue and plan things himself, and she made the mental note to give him an earful about that when she got the chance. Right then, though, it was time for her to talk to Kaito and hope none of the neighbors saw what was happening outside their house.

“I suppose that’s important,” she conceded, pulling a sizable chunk of her long hair in front of her so that she could hide her blushing face with it. “I’ve missed you, Kaito. Ever since I brought you back things just…haven’t been the same, and I miss you.”

“Why’re you hiding yourself away like this?” He was asking about what she was doing with her hair, but Maki thought for a moment that Kaito was drawing attention to her behavior as a whole, asking her why she’d chosen to isolate herself from him even though she felt the answer to that was fairly obvious. Slowly, she let her guard fall, her hair slipping out of her hands and falling back behind her, and her bright red cheeks were visible to him, backlit by the light in her room. “There’s that face I’ve wanted to see for so long! I’m glad we’re getting to have this time together, Maki Roll. It’s not perfect, but it’s something.”

She nodded, feeling very much the same sentiment inside her heart, even though her brain was screaming that she shouldn’t have been endangering him like this. “It’s something I could probably get used to again,” she admitted, shifting her eyes up towards the ceiling so that she didn’t have to look in Kaito’s direction. “But I don’t want to accidentally kill you, so we’ll have to be careful with it, got it? Unless…do you _want_ to die?”

“Not a second time, if it means losin’ you forever. I’ll do whatever it takes to get to spend time with you all the time, if it means sitting across the room or talking to you through open windows at night.” Kaito laughed, pressing his hand against the window screen and slowly letting his fingers curl up, as if he was grabbing something. “I thought you would’ve known it from how things were before you brought me back, but I always thought you were a great friend once you came outta your shell. Then I died and you saved me and things changed and I didn’t quite get it, ‘til Shuichi explained why you were so distant to me.”

“I figured you would’ve gotten why I stayed away, you’d heard me explain my ability so many times that you should’ve known exactly how it worked.” He was the one who’d asked her to use her talent on him, she never had a reason to suspect he wasn’t solid on her needing to keep her distance after. “But that’s in the past, I guess. You’re here now, and we’re going to be friends again if only because you’re really insistent we do it.”

“I’m insistent, sure, but you clearly want it. The whole world can see it. I mean, your face is so bright right now I bet they can see it up in space, like a beacon in the night!” The way Kaito spoke was so charming, and his joyful expression was comforting, and the way he wanted to hold her hand but couldn’t was heartbreaking; this encounter was going exactly as Maki had figured it would if it happened and she was living for it.

So the lifegiver, the deathtaker with a single touch, looked at her forbidden prince across the window screen and genuinely smiled, reaching out towards him with her own hand and touching the screen near his, curling her fingers the same way. It was as close as she’d ever thought her hand would get to his again, and she hoped that she could keep herself to maintaining that distance even as they rebuilt their relationship in the coming days, weeks, months, even years. She didn’t need to isolate herself from someone who wanted to see her just as much as she wanted to see him, and with that dedication in mind she felt it was safe to give in to her heart and let herself find happiness.

But happiness for Maki wasn’t going to come cheap, and she hoped that Kaito would understand that one wrong move, one wrong touch, would result in nothing but pain for her for the rest of her life, because she’d have taken his.


	2. Chapter 2

Learning to navigate a relationship where they physically could not touch each other under most circumstances came with a difficult learning curve for one of the two, while the other was already accustomed to living life in such a way. Kaito hadn’t mentally grown away from the idea of picking Maki up or grabbing her as he wanted, usually reaching for her hand or her arm, and every time she could see his long fingers inching towards her she would calmly, coldly tell him that if he did what he was thinking, he would die. That threat would have been enough to stop most people, but Kaito had known her to say that sort of thing as a joke in the past and would continue on for a few more seconds, before freezing and realizing that she wasn’t joking around.

“Geez, sorry about that, Maki Roll,” he’d always say, bringing his hand back to his side and, most importantly, away from whatever patch of exposed skin of hers he was about to kill himself on. “Sometimes I just…wanna be able to touch the girl I love, y’know? Kinda rude that the universe won’t let me do that.”

“Yeah, well, imagine how I feel when you’re just one name on the list of hundreds I can’t touch, and you’re the one I’d feel worst about killing on accident.” Maki had said hundreds, but the moment she stopped speaking she couldn’t help but question the accuracy of that number. It had to be larger, she’d been bringing people back to life since she was a child, and even though she knew a bunch had died a second time, whether by her or by other causes, she couldn’t say that it was enough to make much of a difference. She was playing the role of a god that had no business meddling with men, and yet there she was, sitting in her living room with Kaito on the other side of the couch, looking at her like she was a treat he couldn’t have without spoiling his meal.

She’d never been so frustrated with her choices before in her life, but knowing that she was getting to spend time with someone who’d never left her mind or her heart made up for the mistake she knew she was making. Their lives quickly became routine, much like any couple dating would experience, making sure to have time for each other in the hecticness that they called their day-to-day business. Maki found out that Kaito was still dabbling in space-themed endeavors, even though his legal death and resurrection prohibited him from leaving the planet’s atmosphere as an astronaut, and he seemed to have always known that she was doing assassin-like work on top of trying not to kill people she’d formerly saved. Two days out of the week were reserved for them to get to spend time together, usually sitting on the couch at her place because she didn’t want to face his grandparents and have to explain to them why she wasn’t touching their grandson, but occasionally they used that time to go out on actual dates.

Those were a test of creativity and uniqueness, and anyone around who watched them awkwardly interact while keeping their distance would have wondered if they were there as just friends or as friendly exes, not as people actively dating. There weren’t cute hand-holding moments, or kisses at the end of the date, or gentle leans into the other’s shoulder when the conversation hit a natural lull. Sometimes, especially if they were dining out, Maki would grab something and lay it over her hand, so that Kaito could set his on top of it, and if she happened to be wearing leggings or a long skirt that night he would let his hand slide off her protective cover and have it rest on her thigh instead, but that was as close as they would get to touching without risking too much.

But every interaction did feel like a huge risk in Maki’s mind, and she found herself dreading those date nights when she would want nothing more than to be held by her boyfriend and have him stroke her hair or kiss her cheek or wrap his arms around her shoulders and tell her everything was going to be okay. Those were things she would see Shuichi and Kaede get to do when they were together (now that she’d opened up about Kaito she had allowed Kaede back in her life, and sometimes the four of them would go on dates together that ended in one couple being overly romantic and the other being overly distant), and she would have been lying if she wasn’t jealous of what they had.

He was able to pick up on this without her saying a word, just by seeing her longing gazes at her friends before giving him an even deeper stare. “C’mon, Maki Roll, what we’ve got isn’t that bad. I just like being able to spend time with ya, so what if we can’t do all that mushy-gushy nonsense?” Kaito grinned after asking his question, which was more than enough to get Maki to melt on the spot, but that only made her problem worse; every time she felt so strongly about him she had to resist grabbing him and pulling him into the kiss she’d wanted since she first saved his life.

“I’d like to have a boyfriend I could do that ‘mushy-gushy nonsense’ with, so there’s your answer,” she replied, sounding spiteful and sour with how she spat her words. “I went most of my life without anyone loving me, and now that I have someone, what do I get? No physical touch, that’s what! If I want a hug, I have to ask Shuichi or Kyoko for it, and do you think either of them want to play your role in my life?”

“I know that you don’t want me answering that, ‘cause you know that they both care about you more than themselves some days. You’ve done amazing things for them, Maki Roll, and the least they wanna do is help you out when you need it. That’s a promise, and you can go ask ‘em for yourself if you don’t believe me.” His grin may have faltered but he was still giving off an air of confidence that made it hard for her to argue against him any longer, something that he noticed with how she backed down, looking less angry. “You’re not going to ask them, huh?”

“There’s no point in asking them, I know you’re right.” Heaving a sigh, Maki rolled her eyes and leaned back on her spot on the couch, while Kaito thought for a second before jumping to his feet. “What are you thinking of doing?” she asked, watching him head towards the bedrooms. “You’re not asking them for me. One, you already know their answer. Two, neither of them are even here so…what are you doing?”

“Going to your room to grab something, I’ll be right back.” She could have chosen to chase him down but he seemed so confident in what he was doing that she didn’t want to question it. Kicking her feet up underneath her as she waited for him to come back, Maki heard her bedroom door open and close rather quickly, and almost immediately Kaito was right back in front of her, holding out a picture frame. “Here ya go, this whole conversation has reminded me that I’ve been holdin’ on to this for a long time and since ya wanna be down on our relationship, it just kinda felt right to give it to you now.”

Hesitating for a second, Maki ultimately chose to grab the frame from his hand and look at the picture inside of it, seeing a years-younger version of herself staring back at her with murderous intent in her eyes. “Good god, you really have been hanging on to this forever, haven’t you? This is from…wow, back when we barely knew each other. Why do you even have it?”

“My grandma found the picture one day and decided to frame it. Said it was only fitting that she put a picture of the girl who saved my life in a frame, since I told her about your whole touch thing and she knew that, well, I was almost as crazy about you as I was about the stars.” Laughing, Kaito sat back down on the other side of the couch from where Maki was, his attention focused entirely on her and how she was staring at her younger self, tears welling in her eyes. “Whoa there, what’s the crying for? It’s not that sad, is it?”

Maki blinked once and the tears were rolling down her cheeks, dropping off her chin and hitting the dirtied glass on the picture frame. “I separated myself from you for stupid, selfish reasons, when I was hurting just as much as you when I made that choice. I thought it’d be better if…if you were basically dead to me…and I…”

“Hey now, there’s no need to cry over it, you were just doing what you thought was right and we know now that it wasn’t what you needed to do!” Reaching a hand over towards Maki, he stopped himself when he remembered what would happen if he gave her too comforting of an embrace and he recoiled, bringing his hand into his own lap with a sigh. “I know it’s hard to have me but not be able to do anything more than, y’know, this, but it’s better than what you thought you had to have. That’s what matters, isn’t it?”

She sniffled, more tears splashing on her younger self’s angered expression. “I guess so.”

“I know there’s nothing I can do to change any of this, except be here for ya like I am, but I’ll try to come up with something. After all, anything’s possible if you give it a shot, and I’m sure there’s some way you’ll be able to get the love you need without it bein’ either of your roommates giving it to you for me.” It was clear wheels were turning in Kaito’s mind but he didn’t have anything to show for it, and Maki was too distressed and distraught to try coming up with anything of her own, and so they sat there separated for what felt like forever, until the others who lived in the home came back and Maki had to act stronger than she really was to save face in front of them.

Over time, her emotional breakdowns in Kaito’s presence became more prevalent, because she was so desperate for his love and affection and she was so unprepared for handling the fact that she was close but not close enough to getting it. That led to questioning from her roommates (Kyoko usually, but once or twice it was Shuichi who started it) about if she was happy in her relationship and if it was right for her to be in it after all. Admitting that the distance aspect was the hardest part of everything was not in her best interest, because she’d known that would be a challenge from the start, so she lied and said everything was perfectly fine, even when she was broken and teary-eyed.

So, naturally, after many denials from her they went to the other half of the relationship and asked him what was going on and why Maki was so emotionally volatile, and in a different way than she usually was. “She just wants someone who can get up close and personal with her,” Kaito explained after giving it a second’s thought. “Like, you know, doing real relationship things. Hugging, kissing, that sort of stuff.”

“Thanks for clarifying on that,” Kyoko replied, while Shuichi sat alongside, covering his face in embarrassment from his friend’s answer. “The last thing I was prepared to hear was about how Maki’s desperate for someone to share a bed with her, since you can’t do the job.”

“Did you really need to say it like that?” he sputtered, trying not to look at how Shuichi had completely broken and was laughing into his hands, while Kyoko had maintained her composure the entire time. “I don’t even know if that’s something Maki Roll’s interested in, it’s definitely not anything we’ve talked about. She just waves me goodbye at the end of the night and locks her door, and sometimes I’ve gotta get back in there to get my stuff and that’s awkward, but sharin’ a room with her wouldn’t work, y’know? Can you imagine her killin’ me because one of us sleepwalks without knowin’ it?”

“Not to mention the fact that no one should be having sleepovers with their significant other in this house.” Kyoko gave a stern side-eye towards Shuichi, who was still laughing but working to collect himself, unaware of what had been said in his direction. “I know neither of you sleepwalk, but if you wanted to try sharing a room you’d need to find your own place to live. I’m not letting Maki bend the rules simply because she cannot share a bed with you, Kaito, and that’s that.”

“I wasn’t even asking for that! I just said it wouldn’t work, not that I wanted to do it!” But the damage was done and now the seed was sown in Kaito’s mind, that it was possible for them to share a room as long as they lived somewhere else, and he kept that tidbit from Maki much like he kept the fact that he’d been approached by her roommates to himself. Their date nights still often ended with her upset over the lack of love she wanted, but now he was wondering if she was most upset that she couldn’t sleep with him, rather than just the innocent forms of romantic expression he’d always believed she craved.

The truth was, Maki _did_ seem to only want the innocent forms of romance, and Kyoko had jumped to conclusions in her attempted interrogation, but Kaito wasn’t going to exactly walk up to his girlfriend and ask her if she was upset she couldn’t sleep with him even though they were always together. He was going to come up with the next best thing to what he thought she wanted, and he was going to surprise her with it, and he was going to get to be the best boyfriend ever for being so accommodating and so loving.

His plan was intended to come to fruition one sunny spring day, a while after they’d started dating and long after they’d gotten comfortable with the other and the limitations in their very special relationship. He’d long had the idea to take Maki out with a bunch of his friends, most of which she couldn’t touch due to having brought them back to life, and after having a great day with them he was going to drop news on her that he’d been planning on his lonesome for months. It just needed for the day to go perfectly, and then everything would be right in their world for a moment.

How difficult it was to ensure that things didn’t fall apart the second they could, though. “It’s like walking around seeing ghosts,” Maki muttered under her breath after she and Kaito arrived at where he’d told all of the invited guests to meet, in a parking lot at a nature park, seeing so many faces she’d revived from death. “I can’t believe you know most of these people, the ones we didn’t go to school with. How did you meet them, exactly?”

“Here and there, I’m kinda social when I wanna be,” he answered with a smile, keeping his distance but watching her head turning as she was looking at all of the people there. “And don’t worry, Shuichi and Kaede’ll be here later, they just had something to do before they showed up. We’ve gotta wait for them, and that’ll be everyone!”

“Of course we’re waiting on them,” she grumbled, still looking around at the others who seemed to be staring at her, coldness in all of their glares. “And now I’m going to leave, thanks for dragging me out for this Kaito but I am _really_ not interested.”

Before he could reply she was storming off, heading towards the closest trailhead she could see. She thrived on being alone when she was bothered, so it only made sense that she would hike alone; when a hand grabbed hers and didn’t immediately go tense she froze mid-step and looked behind her to see a smaller woman standing there, holding onto her tightly and pouting. “I don’t want to see you get hurt out there, Maki,” she said, loosening her grip but not enough to fully let go. “Up there, off the trail, that’s where…you know.”

All at once an aspect of the location hit Maki like a ton of bricks, and she mentally cursed Kaito for bringing her there without knowing what she’d witnessed up on one of the many cliffsides in the park. “And yet you came anyway, Himiko?” she asked in return, seeing the other woman meekly nod underneath her floppy hat. “I’m impressed, but you shouldn’t force yourself to go up there.”

“I’m only here because Kaito said you’d be here, and I never thanked you for fixing that!” The words seemed to fling themselves out of Himiko’s mouth, and she gasped at how forcefully she had spoken. “I-I mean, I’m here to say thank you for bring Angie and Tenko back to life after the rockfall. It meant a lot for you to hike up here in the dark by yourself to save them, because the medics…they were going to…take them until you showed up.”

“Medics are used to me coming in and meddling with their plans to call the morgue, yeah.” It had been years since that night, and Maki hadn’t seen any of the ladies involved in it since she’d disappeared back down the trail after saving two lives in one fell swoop. Usually she didn’t get thanks from anyone when she saved someone, but for a person she _didn’t_ save to thank her was beyond surprising, even though it made her feel less wary of hanging around everyone like Kaito had planned. “I’m glad you thought to call for me when it happened. Took me out of having to go raid a mafia den, pretty sure.”

Himiko nodded again, letting go of Maki’s arm completely so that she could pull the brim of her hat down over her eyes. “I’m not crying, don’t even think I am! I’m just…practicing more thank-you magic for later, that’s all!”

Unsure of how to reply to that, Maki suggested they walk back over to everyone else and Himiko obliged, staying with her until they were back in the group and then she was rushing to her friends’ sides, pointing back in Maki’s direction and causing the other two to wave their thanks as well. The smile that came onto Maki’s face at the gesture felt bittersweet, because she did like being thanked but the fact that she wished that she hadn’t had to save their lives in the first place was too powerful for her to ignore. She really was walking among ghosts, or zombies to be more exact, and aside from Himiko (and Shuichi, whenever he showed up), there wasn’t a single person present that she hadn’t resurrected.

“What’re ya thinking about?” Kaito asked her when she finally made her way back to being in his general area, noticing that she was still smiling but looked wistful as she did. “That’s not a normal Maki Roll expression you’ve got going on there. Something happen when Himiko chased you up the trail?”

“Nothing you need to worry yourself with. It was handled when I talked to her.” The last thing Maki felt was needed right then was to explain that she’d had an experience with a few of the people that were there which had resulted in two deaths that she’d reversed, because she was certain that Kaito would not take hearing that his choice in outing was not well-received. Instead, she chose to move the conversation in a different direction: “Do you have any idea when those slowpokes are supposed to be here? Bet if we have to wait too much longer someone’s going to start trying to get us all going. My money would be on Kokichi.”

“Heh, they’ll be here soon, it hasn’t been that long since we got here. And sure, betting money on Kokichi’s the easy way out of things.” Bringing a hand to his chin so he could stroke his tiny goatee, Kaito glanced around at everyone who was present before singling someone out. “I’d put my money, my whole life’s savings, down on Kirumi trying to take control of things. She’s real good at leading everyone, it would only make sense.”

“Then it might be good that we’re not betting for real, because I’m literally watching Kokichi try to get people to follow his lead right now.” Maki laughed when she saw Kaito’s attention turn towards the small man she was referring to, as he was loudly talking to people and gesturing towards the hiking trail. “Can’t believe you picked Kirumi over him.”

He puffed out his chest defiantly, before exclaiming, “There’s no way that Kokichi’s actually trying to get anyone to go somewhere without my permission! Let me get at him, I swear he’s gonna learn one of these days that you’ve gotta listen to Kaito Momota when he gives out directions!”

Amused as she watched him run at full speed to go settle that issue, Maki was once again taken by surprise when someone touched her and didn’t immediately lose their pulse doing so. “Sorry we took so long, had to get the all-clear from Kyoko that these would work for the occasion,” Shuichi said, holding out a bag for Maki to grab. “They’re nothing fancy, but she said they’re thick enough to be safe.”

“You brought me gloves, so I can hold hands with Kaito while we’re out here.” Maki didn’t even need to look in the bag to know what she was being offered, and the way that both Shuichi and Kaede seemed happy to hear her guess made her want to ignore the bag entirely and spend the day the way she wanted. But they were trying to be helpful in regards to her special situation and she couldn’t merely deny their assistance simply because she wanted to be stubborn about things. She eyed the bag suspiciously for a second before taking it from Shuichi and taking the gloves out of it. “Special occasion gloves, interesting. Why didn’t you go with leather ones like Kyoko’s got, bet those would work better.”

“My idea, sorry,” Kaede apologized, bowing her head for a moment before lifting it with a twinkle in her eyes. “Actually, getting the gloves in the first place was my idea. If I can play the piano with those on, I figured…hey, Maki should be able to touch people with them! They’re totally durable and they’ll be worth it, I bet!”

After slipping them on and finding them slightly large for her small hands, and unable to stay firmly up on her arms, Maki was again wishing that she had ignored them in the first place, but she plastered a smile on her lips and thanked the two before shoving the now-empty bag back in Shuichi’s hands and chasing her boyfriend down. That first touch was nerve-wracking, because she was terrified they wouldn’t work and Kaito would go crumpling to the ground as a corpse when her fingers hit his arm, but he was alive enough to turn to see her standing there, and he broke out in raucous laugher for a few moments before declaring the excursion a go.

Their fingers had never actually been laced together before then, so it was a thrill for Maki to hold her arm out away from her body and let him hold her hand, and Kaito was more than happy to show off that he was getting to hold hands with her for the first time. He had them at the head of the pack, so that he could lift their arms and show everyone behind them their intertwined hands, earning murmurs and faint praise at the display. “They’re all jealous of what we’ve got right now, Maki Roll,” he boasted, the pride in his voice much more prevalent than usual. “If we weren’t hiking, I’d definitely take a look to see how many of ‘em are just full of envy over this.”

“I’m willing to guess there’s exactly zero who care that much,” she replied, loving the feeling of closeness they had going for them but hating how he was taking it. “Let’s just get through this hike and hope that we don’t accidentally bump arms. How embarrassing would that be, you getting so cocky about our relationship that you die showing off.”

Kaito was thrown off by her statement but didn’t let it bother him too much. “H-hey, it’s not gonna happen like that! We’re gonna live long, happy lives together, just you wait and see!”

“I’ll be waiting to see it, for sure.”

Their hike could have gone off without a hitch, if Kaito hadn’t invited everyone he knew to join them for the day. He still wasn’t aware of what had happened up there on those cliffs, but those who knew all about the fatal incident that had taken place years prior were making sure to stay firmly on the trail, which made leading them much easier for the pair at the front. That was, until a couple of them decided to take a scenic breakaway, getting off the beaten path to get closer to the cliffside to see the views down to the water below. “Uh, Kaito and Maki, you might want to stop,” Shuichi called from the back of the pack, him and Kaede having chosen to take the rear to keep tabs on everyone. “Some of the group isn’t sticking with us.”

“They’re going…they’re headed…Maki! They’re going to go see where it happened, I know it!” Himiko chimed in, sounding absolutely terrified, and that was what truly got Maki’s attention. The first thing she saw was that Himiko had only one of her usual two people with her, Angie’s hands gripping her shoulders tightly in the absence of Tenko. “You have to stop them, please!”

“Stop them?” she repeated, pulling her hand out of Kaito’s and looking at them in their gloved glory. “I…guess I can, can’t I? As long as there’s not another rockfall and no one dies of their own stupidity then I can save them for you, Himiko.” Maki didn’t want to admit that she wasn’t sure she’d be able to do anything, especially when she saw who else was missing, aside from Tenko. “Geez, do I have to bring them all back?” she muttered under her breath, before finding the side trail that would have been used to get to the cliffside, shaking her head to clear it and running to follow whoever had left.

The voices calling for her to turn back and not follow were loud and clear, but Maki wanted to do something else right for Himiko. She could get everyone to turn back around with the mere threat of touching them to kill them all, and then she’d be a hero in her little friend’s mind yet again. But if they were choosing to look at where Tenko had met death the first time, perhaps threatening them all with a permanent stay in the afterlife wasn’t going to work out. That wasn’t something she wanted to consider having to deal with, not when every time she’d been forced to threaten someone with dying again they’d either attacked her and died or gone peacefully somewhere else. It couldn’t be different just because she was dealing with people that were part of her social group, they had to have a reason to live.

If she’d been out there for any other reason, she might have found the time to look out into the valley and admire the beauty of the scene, but as she got closer to the cliffside Maki could hear the voices of Tenko and the three men she’d gone out there with. “And this is just about where we’d set up camp when it happened,” Tenko was explaining further up ahead, which Maki knew to be correct in terms of location. It may have been in the dark of night but she certainly did remember how far along the side of the cliff she’d had to travel to find where the rocks had fallen. “Still dunno why the rocks fell on us, but it’s a miracle Himiko wasn’t in the tent when it happened, just me and Angie in there. Would’ve really sucked if we hadn’t been able to get the help we did.”

“It is…much lovelier of a scene to die in than a hospital room,” the soft, eerie voice belonging to Korekiyo replied, and in her mind Maki was transported from the darkened cliff to the silent room in the critical burn unit where she’d saved his life. She had to blink to restore herself to her dangerous surroundings, just as she nearly stepped too close to the cliffside, rocks sliding from under her foot to fall down into the valley below.

“Yeah, well, at least you can say you died and came back in the same place. Don’t know where I died, don’t remember where I came back, doesn’t really matter to me.” Cackling at his own luck on the matter, Kokichi sounded as obnoxious as usual and Maki wondered if he’d been planning this diversion the entire time, even before the hiking had started. “All I know is that I was dying to know where this happened, and it’s so great you were able to show us. Thanks a million, Tenko!”

“You did manage to get me out here in a scummy way, but…it’s been a while since I came up here so I _guess_ bringing degenerates like yourselves is acceptable.” There was a moment where the only sounds Maki could hear were birds in the trees and winds down below, and then she heard something she wished she hadn’t had to listen to—the sound of someone screaming in agony, and it certainly wasn’t Tenko, who reacted with, “Oh, wow, I didn’t mean to do that to you, you okay down there?”

“That was a bitch move, you bully! No wonder guys can’t stand you, all you do is beat us up! Gonta, help me back up there so I can throw her off!” Hearing the attitude swing in Kokichi’s voice was enough to get Maki to throw caution to the wind and run to where they were, rocks and dirt flying everywhere with every step, and when she got to the familiar part of the cliffside she saw Kokichi hanging on to what was definitely an unstable rock with all of his strength, while massive Gonta looked down at him with wariness in his gaze.

“All of you, get back to the group right this second,” Maki demanded, finding the strength in herself to take control of the situation. “I’ll get Kokichi back up myself, and then we’re going to have a long talk about why we don’t play these games.”

“You can’t touch me, let one of them do it!” Kokichi whined, his fingers adjusting to hold his position. “I can hang here all day, make one of them help me, I don’t want you killing me by trying to be helpful!”

She held out her gloved hands for him to see them, while she turned to see that none of the others had moved. “Go on, get back to the group! I’ve got this under control!” She turned back to Kokichi and began getting low to the ground, offering him one of those gloved hands, but she hadn’t quite considered just how weak the ground was in that spot until she felt it shift under her feet and she screamed in frustration and panic, “Okay, if you’re not going someone grab my legs before I fall over this cliff! Don’t touch my skin and you’ll be fine, I swear to you I’m not going to trick you into death right here!”

“I suppose I would be the necessary link in a chain between the deathtaker and anyone else,” Korekiyo said after a couple tense moments, during which he, Tenko, and Gonta had all looked at each other wondering who would risk themselves. “After all, I too have a protective barrier between myself and her skin, that being my own gloves.”

As he took his position, grabbing Maki’s legs mid-calf, Gonta nodded towards Tenko before stating his own intentions. “Then Gonta will hold Kiyo to make sure he doesn’t slip as well.”

“And I’ll go get everyone else, just in case this gets worse.” With a spring in her step Tenko went bounding back towards where they’d diverted from the main trail, hollering the whole way to get everyone’s attention. That left the four there at the cliffside, all of whom were in positions that were important to keep, especially when the rocks supporting Maki crumbled more and she slipped forward, grabbing Kokichi’s arm without waiting any longer for him to take her offer.

She could see over his head into the valley below, and for the first time in a while she wondered what death would feel like for her if she were to be let go of and slide to her demise. The last time she’d thought about it, she was going toe-to-toe with a member of the yakuza, a gun pushed up under her chin and a steady finger on the trigger, and the only reason she’d gotten out of that alive was that the man brushed against her before taking his shot. That had been when she lived for no one but herself, doing dirty work for the better of a society she had no place in.

But now, Maki knew she belonged in the life she’d built for herself, she knew she had friends and a boyfriend and if she lost any of them she’d be devastated. “You have to grab my other hand and let go of the damn rock, Kokichi,” she calmly told him, bringing herself back into the situation she’d let herself get into rather than staying in the realm of hypotheticals. “I will save you, and then I’ll let Kaito beat your ass for getting yourself stuck like this.”

“It was Tenko’s fault, she’s the one who pushed me over the edge,” he retorted, looking warily at how his arm was being gripped before letting go of the rock to grab Maki’s other hand. “I didn’t even do anything to deserve this, she just really hates me or something.”

“I’m sure you did plenty to deserve it, but that’s not what matters. I’m going to let go of your arm and you need to grab that hand too, got it?” She could have easily brought him back up with how they were positioned, especially with the two men behind her who were keeping her from going over the edge, but the fear of accidentally knocking his free hand into her bare arm was somewhat crippling in the moment. There was no way she could be certain she wouldn’t make a mistake, but she was certainly going to try to make sure it didn’t happen.

Kokichi had other plans, though, as evidenced by the sly smile on his face as she’d asked her question. “Of course, I can definitely do that,” he said with a voice that was oddly confident for being someone hanging over the edge of a cliff. “I’ll even make sure I only touch where you’ve got a glove on. You know, to stay safe and all that.”

“It’s either that or die, and do you want to die?”

His smile grew wider for a second before he brought his lips into a straight line, rethinking whatever it was he was going to say. “No, not really. I’ve got so much to live for…” He trailed off as she let go of his arm and offered her hand again, her grip on his other hand tightening as she could feel him falling further away. But before he made any motions to grab her, he continued speaking as the smile came back in full force. “And the first thing on that list is proving to the world that this whole ‘deathtaker’ thing is a scam. You can’t actually kill someone with a touch.”

“What the—Kokichi, don’t you _fucking_ do it!” There wasn’t much Maki could do aside from pull him up faster, but he was swinging himself to get the momentum to reach past what she was offering. Despite her pleading with him to rethink what he was doing, he continued to reach higher and higher, and the second his finger brushed against her uncovered forearm she could feel the hand she was holding go stiff and lifeless. “Oh my god, pull us up! He just…the idiot just…he…”

There was no need for explanation as to what had happened when they were both safely up on the cliff, him unmoving and her visibly fuming at what she’d caused by being helpful. He’d used his last moments to try and prove her to be a fraud, and now she’d ended up using her ability to kill someone who hadn’t honestly deserved it. Sure, Kokichi had been a pain in everyone’s neck for as long as they’d all known him, but he didn’t need to die a second time in such a ridiculous way. Gonta and Korekiyo both had heard what he’d been saying right before he’d made his choice, so they couldn’t blame Maki for what happened, and they took the initiative to explain why there was a corpse there with them when the rest of their group finally arrived.

Rather than deal with anyone else, the second the group came back Maki picked herself up off of the ground, threw the gloves straight in Shuichi’s face, and stormed back to the parking lot, blacking out in her anger once she got there and not remembering a thing until everyone else had returned, minus the one that was dead. Minus the one _she_ was responsible for killing.

No one blamed her for anything, even if she blamed herself, yet no one wanted to talk to her as their outing wrapped up. The only person who came to say anything to her was Tenko, who regretted pushing Kokichi off the cliff in the first place but knew that Maki wouldn’t have done anything to intentionally make the situation worse. “He got what he was asking for, degenerate scum,” Tenko told her, giving her an air-hug to try and cheer her up. “He chose to challenge you and paid the price, it’s what he deserved.”

“He didn’t deserve to die because of this, but whatever.” Maki did not return the gesture and Tenko walked away muttering something to herself, and the next person who came to talk to her was Kaito, who’d had the misfortune of having to help carry the dead body down to the lot so that the authorities could handle it. “You look like you’ve seen death recently. How’d that go for you? Remind you why you shouldn’t be dating me?”

“C’mon now, Maki Roll, it’d take a lot more than an accident to make me get rid of what we’ve got. In fact…” He bent down to get closer to her level, where she was curled up in a ball next to a bench. “I didn’t exactly get around to tellin’ ya why we came out here in specific in the first place, ‘cause of all this. Would you be interested in knowing now?”

She scowled at how close he was getting to her. “Was it to throw me off the cliff yourself?”

“Nowhere close to it! See, I’ve been thinking a whole lot about what we’ve got going for us, and I’ve had a lot of talks with your roommates and I was…y’know, thinking that maybe we should start livin’ life out on our own. Get our own place, start livin’ like the adults we are, try to make our relationship more formal, if any of that makes sense.” It was an absolutely horrible time to even suggest such a thing, and he knew it, but to see Maki go from so angry to surprised over the course of a few seconds made it worth it. “We’ll have to find somewhere with either a room big enough for two beds or with two bedrooms, but that shouldn’t be too hard, yeah?”

“I just killed your friend and you still want to move in with me?” Maki asked in disbelief, not fully buying what she was hearing. “You want to risk me doing that to you somehow? You’re crazy, Kaito. Absolutely crazy.”

“Sure I am, and I’m crazy for you too. That’s what’s drivin’ me to do this, how much I care about ya.” There were so many things he wanted to do in that moment, between holding her and comforting her and reassuring her that she hadn’t done anything wrong, but Kaito held true with the most bizarre option of all: reminding her that she was worthy of being loved, even with her death-defying powers that she always had on display. “So…what do ya say? You wanna start looking for our own place?”

“Absolutely crazy,” she repeated, “but yes. I’d love to.”


	3. Chapter 3

Finding somewhere that they could move into on the limited budget that they had was difficult, especially since one of them refused to disclose what their job was and how much they made at it, but after several weeks of searching high and low for somewhere acceptable for their needs they were able to get their names on a lease for a home, two bedrooms and one bathroom, that they could call their own. Moving out of the detective house was a bittersweet experience for Maki, since she’d been living there for a while and had fond memories of the place, all things considered, but she was due for a change and getting to stretch her wings with Kaito was what she needed.

“Don’t forget to come check in with me on occasion,” Kyoko reminded her, gesturing to one of her own hands by pulling on the glove she always wore on it. “I’m still going to need your help here and there, as will Shuichi, and if you bring anyone of note back to life it’d be good for me to know, just in case.”

“Please, it’s not like I do much in the way of murdering criminals for you anymore,” she replied, trying to keep her face completely neutral but failing to do so. “We’re just going to be ten minutes from here, you can always drop by if you need to talk to me about work-related things. And, best part, without me in my room anymore, you’ve got a built-in morgue like you’ve always wanted.”

One corner of Kyoko’s mouth jerked upward. “That’s far from what I’ve wanted, but now that you’re finally on your own I suppose I could look into the logistics of it. Just…don’t make any stupid decisions because your heart tells you to, Maki. I’ll be thinking about you.”

Things were definitely different with having their own place, even if the nightly routine ended up being the same, not because of someone being there to remind them that room sharing wasn’t allowed, but rather because they were hesitant to risk any unwanted contact. It would have been devastating for Maki to wake up to find Kaito dead next to her, especially without someone else in the house to comfort her through the incident, so he made sure he had brought his bed from his grandparents’ house over to use in one of the bedrooms, while her bed she’d had at the detective house was in the other. They could easily spend time together privately, rather than in a living room that others would be walking into, but something about the complete lack of visitors on the daily quickly became a problem.

“I think we need to invite the whole gang over,” Kaito decided one day after he’d gotten home from work. “Y’know, have a big housewarming party, get a lot of drinks and food and just let everyone go wild? What d’ya think about that, Maki Roll?”

“Sounds like a recipe for disaster.” All she could think about was the last time they’d gathered on his request, and how she’d permanently killed someone because of it. “I’m fine with Shuichi and Himiko and Kyoko, and maybe each of them can bring one guest, but I’m not having a whole mob in here that I have to avoid.”

He mused on her reasoning for a second before nodding. “Good point, don’t want ya thinking you’ve gotta stay in your room to keep everyone alive. Sometimes I forget that it’s not just me you’ve got to be so careful around. It’s, what, just about everyone I know, right?”

“I wouldn’t go that far.” No matter how much she loved Kaito, she couldn’t deny that when it came to anything that wasn’t his job or outer space, he was kind of thickheaded. But this was the man she’d decided she couldn’t live without, and she was going to have to face the consequences for that decision whether she liked it or not. It wasn’t like she needed to worry too much about him, though, because they didn’t have pets and they couldn’t have…

At just the implied _thought_ of children she felt herself get sick, and behind his back she had to find somewhere to sit to collect herself. She’d never particularly enjoyed being around children for too long, having spent so much time doing menial work in an orphanage whenever she wasn’t being sent out to kill people using her power, and yet she occasionally found herself wondering what it would be like to have kids of her own. Adoption was the logical way to handle things, given what her special circumstances were, but she wasn’t going to bring it up with Kaito unless he talked about it first, and she doubted that he’d even once considered raising children with her. He was too focused on having fun and chasing the universe, he couldn’t realistically think about anything that would ground him more.

He ultimately got his way with inviting people over to the house to show them the new place, and she spent most of that night in her bedroom, listening to the engaging conversations in the main room of the house and wishing she could be part of them. All it would take would be one accidental touch on so many of the people in her house and they’d be dead and she’d be to blame. At least with Kokichi she’d had the excuse that he had chosen to touch her himself, she’d done everything she could to keep him alive; it wouldn’t be quite the same if she knowingly inserted herself into a crowded room full of living ghosts and expected everything to be okay. The alone time was welcomed, if only because it gave her a chance to really think about what she expected to get out of her relationship with Kaito, without needing to worry about him walking in and breaking her concentration.

First and foremost, she wanted a boyfriend who was alive, healthy, and loved her as much as she loved him. That was all in check, she hadn’t heard about anything negative the last time he’d gone to the doctor, and since he’d died from an illness the first time that was reassuring to know, plus she knew he loved her because he hadn’t kicked her out of the house yet. Secondly, she wanted to live her life with someone who understood her boundaries and was willing to accommodate them. Again, that was in check, as Kaito hadn’t suggested any ways to try and touch her since the incident at the park, and he’d been completely understanding when it came to the separate bedroom thing. Third, she didn’t want to deny her significant other any relationship steps she could not provide. That wasn’t one she could be certain she was able to do with Kaito, but he hadn’t complained about the limitations on how they expressed their feelings, so she felt like she was in the clear there.

Lastly, she wanted to be with someone who would provide her with the few things she wanted in life. Those were specifically happiness and the feeling of having a family, and he was great for doing both of those, but a third one kept worming its way into her mind, something she’d never even thought about until they’d moved in together. Was it really true that she wanted to have children with him, or was that her mentally equating kids with a successful relationship? It simply didn’t make sense if that was the case, she knew plenty of people who were successful and happy in their love lives without children—even Kyoko had a boyfriend of sorts, and she put even heavier restrictions on herself than she had to! Why did she think that she needed to start building that bridge all of a sudden?

“Knock knock!” Kaede announced, opening the door without actually knocking, and Maki scrambled to collect herself from hanging over the edge of her bed to look presentable at her friend’s entrance. “I know you wanted to be left alone with all of this that’s going on, but I just wanted to come talk to you for a minute. That’s okay, right?”

“Doesn’t look like there’s much of a choice.”

“Yeah, sorry about that.” Closing the door once she was inside the room, Kaede looked around at the bare walls and the scant furniture and twisted her lips into a thoughtful expression, before getting right into what she’d entered for. “I had to sneak in here, if anyone else knew I was with you, you know they’d want to join me. And this is really a ‘Kaede and Maki have a talk’ sort of thing, not an ‘everyone needs to know’ one.”

Raising her eyebrows, Maki said, “Well, get on with it, you’re just wasting your time standing there drawing this out.”

“Right, right, let me just…tell you.” A deep breath. “Right now.” Another deep breath, with a bit more force. “I’m going to—”

“Is it that you’re getting married?” Cutting her off seemed rude with the dramatic flair Kaede was putting into things, but it was worth it because of the blank stare that she got in return. “That’s my first guess, tell me if I’m wrong.”

“—I mean, that’s something we’re planning, you already knew that. I’m here to tell you that Shuichi’s moving out of Kyoko’s house too, so that we can live together! You’ll never guess _where_ we’re moving to, either!” Based on the overdramatic delivery, Maki had a pretty solid idea of where it was, but she wanted to humor her friend and therefore played dumb, claiming that she had no guesses to make. “Right down the street from here! Isn’t that exciting? We’ll be neighbors!”

“That’s great, I’m so happy for you guys.” Wanting to make some smart remark about how they’d never stop hearing piano music wafting down the road, Maki held her tongue and instead made herself look at least somewhat thrilled with the news, but she still had questions to ask. “Guess that means your parents are fine with him? Never took them as being the kind of people to let their unmarried daughter move in with some guy.”

Kaede’s cheeks began to take on a blush as she thought about how to reply to that. “Well, uh, we weren’t exactly going to tell them I’m moving in with Shuichi, just that I’m moving out of my current place, but if they find out I think they’ll accept it. I just need to live somewhere without nightly quiet hours, and I bet they’ll understand that sacrifices had to be made to make that happen.”

Again, Maki held her tongue on what she really wanted to say, but she could tell that Kaede was getting antsy still staying in that room, so she wrapped things up quickly. “Just let us know when you guys go through with the move, we’ll help you out as much as we can. You know, in return for you having helped us when we moved in here.”

“We’ll definitely appreciate the help! Especially with my piano, you know that’s going to take a lot of manpower to get into place…” Laughing, Kaede bowed her head respectfully before leaving Maki’s room, making sure to tightly close the door behind her once she was gone. The silence she left in her wake was broken almost immediately by Maki’s long, drawn-out sigh as she buried her head in her pillows on her bed, lamenting the fact that she’d _never_ get the same things out of a relationship like Kaede was, because obviously the two of them were going to get up to some things once they were in their own place.

She thought about how Kyoko was going to take having her house completely to herself for the first time in years, but realized that without roommates, she was probably going to loosen up on restrictions since she didn’t need to be so harsh on herself. That, or she was going to find new people to rent rooms to, and inevitably end up with either more detectives or more deathtakers under her wing. “We’re all branching out, but we’re still the same exact people we always were,” she reminded herself, removing her head from the pillow pile. “And that means we can’t go around making dumb decisions just because the people around us might choose to.”

It was supposed to be self-talk that helped her clear her mind about things, but knowing that the inevitable was coming sooner rather than later made it hard for her to think about anything but the fact that pretty soon, the people she surrounded herself with (unwillingly, with Kaito’s insistence) were going to be taking on different roles. How she handled finding out about those, though, would be entirely on herself. She could either let it drag her down, or she could be a positive force in everyone’s lives, knowing that she held a lot of influence on whether they lived or died.

That night, after the party had ended and they were cleaning up the carnage, Kaito looked over at Maki as she was tying off a bag of trash, watching her hoist it over her shoulder to carry it outside to the curb. “Y’know, things would’ve been a lot more fun if you’d been out here to enjoy them,” he said, knowing he was hitting on a sensitive topic but choosing to pursue it anyway. “We could’ve used your kind of humor, it was kinda dull at times.”

“Sorry that I prefer knowing no one dies over me having a good time,” she replied, trying not to snap at him. “I told you from the start that I didn’t want this party to happen for that very reason, and you didn’t listen to me.”

“It’s just fun to know I can invite people over and throw a huge bash like this! My grandparents never let me do things like this, they said it’d get too loud and wake the neighbors and I couldn’t do that to any of those old folks.” Watching her head for the door, Kaito considered following but chose not to, waiting until she came back inside empty-handed with the intention of taking out more trash to keep talking to her. “You’re mad at me about this, aren’t you?” he asked, noticing that she was immediately back to putting cups and cans into a new bag. “I’d hug you to try and make you see some sense but you’d kill me and I don’t think either of us want that.”

“At this point? You threw a party that you knew I didn’t want happening, I’m rightfully angry over that, it would be lovely if I could kill you.” The words spilled out without Maki really thinking them through, and the moment she let the irrational feelings she was having take control she knew she’d made a mistake. That was evident with how Kaito immediately sounded dejected as he asked her if that was true. “No, I just…I don’t…you don’t get what it’s like to be me, Kaito! I can’t have fun and party like you can, I have to be careful or else more people will die unnecessarily and I don’t want that ever again!”

“Why are you so emotional right now? Did me leavin’ you out really hurt you like this?” Saying that he was confused would have been grossly understating how Kaito felt, because he just didn’t know what was wrong with Maki. He couldn’t relate to her aversion to people she’d saved before, he couldn’t relate to the feeling of killing someone who didn’t deserve it, and he had no idea what other kinds of thoughts had been running through her mind in the time she’d been isolating herself. “I want to know what I can to do to make it all better for ya, Maki Roll. That’s all I want right now.”

“You can make it right by not having died before,” she bluntly replied, knowing that aspect was the root of most of the problems. “That, or you can find a way to get rid of my powers. Those are our two options, which one do you think’s most likely?”

He grimaced as he thought it over, before giving a shaky answer of, “Neither of them?”

“Exactly, neither of them. This is how it’s always going to be, me keeping my distance and you trying to live your life how you want, and I’m going to always be the downer on whatever high you find.” She threw a can not into the bag but at the wall, the remnant liquid inside of it splashing out and onto the floor, which made her huff and collapse into sitting right where she’d been standing. “I can’t pretend like I’m normal to make you happy, Kaito. I’d love to, I really would, but I can’t and I’m not going to try.”

“No one said I wanted you to be normal. I’m fine with you how you are.” He stopped cleaning as well and sat down next to her, keeping enough distance to prevent accidental touching. “Sure, there’s a lot of things I’m gonna miss out on because of that, but who cares? As long as I’ve got the love of my life by my side, even if she can’t actually be _by_ my side, that’s what matters to me.”

Thinking about Kaede and how she was so happy to be getting to move in with Shuichi, for reasons beyond what she’d stated, Maki looked at Kaito and his concerned expression, his downcast eyes, evidence of glitter settled down on his goatee, and she broke down completely. “I just want to know you’re getting what you want out of the life you asked me for,” she sobbed, burying her head in her arms as she tried curling into a ball as best as she could there on the floor. “I want to know that I’m not denying you all of your life experiences that you’d have if you were dating someone normal.”

“I’ll be honest with ya, I got with you knowing that what we had on day one would be pretty close to what we’d have for the rest of our lives. Even movin’ in together wasn’t something I’d considered doing until we’d been together for a while. I was gonna be fine with the bare basics of a relationship, and you’ve already given me so much more than that.” He leaned back, using his hands to prop him up as he reclined. “I mean, there’s a couple things I’m a bit sad I won’t get to do with ya, but they’re not relationship-killers by any means.”

“And what are those?” she asked, choking out her words like they were poison trying to drown her. “What are the things I’m ruining for you?”

“Well, uh, it’s always gonna make me sad that I can’t kiss those lips of yours. That’s a big one.” He paused at the same time she was slowly picking herself up, looking at him with her mouth slightly open in shock. “Oh, and as cool as it would be to marry ya, I wouldn’t wanna do that if we couldn’t do anything to show it off. But that’s fine, I came into this thinkin’ we’d just date forever, so it’s not a big loss. And…” His voice trailed off as he stared at her watching him in return. “I mean, it would’ve been neat if I could have kids of my own someday but I’m not stressed about not getting to.”

All of the walls that Maki had built up around herself were crumbling down at the first thing he’d mentioned, so by the time he’d finished his list she was completely exposed to the seriousness with which he spoke. “I’ve been thinking about that too, actually,” she said, once she had the power to speak. “The kids thing, I mean. Everything else I was completely at peace with from the moment we started dating. I just…I grew up in an orphanage, I want to know that children can have a good home.”

Her voice was soft, almost stripped down as she was talking, and she could see that he was completely on-board with bearing his emotions in that moment. “Then that’s cool, once we’ve got the money to make it work, we can adopt like fifty kids and give ‘em the best lives they could ever want!” His eyes lighting up at the prospect, Kaito noticed that Maki wasn’t responding as eagerly as he was and he calmed back down right away. “What, is that not what you’d want?”

“I don’t know what I want. Adopting kids to give them a better life than I had is a good idea, but…that’s not important right now. Is that what _you_ want?” He gave a non-committal noise and she frowned, watching as he pushed himself back up to standing and went back to cleaning the room. “Kaito, you better answer me. Is that what you want from this?”

“Give me time to think about it,” he replied, turning his back on her and going silent from that point on. She rolled her eyes and got up, still feeling emotional but not to the point of being combative with him. If he wanted to think, she’d let him think, and they could come back to the conversation whenever he was ready for it.

There were days in the future where they skirted around the topic, bringing up someone else that they’d heard about having children, but stopping short of talking about it for themselves. They attended social events together where that would be a general topic of conversation but no one would bring it up with them, nor would they talk about it with each other—although it was clear that it was something they were both listening for in everyone else’s conversations. But Maki thought she’d struck a nerve trying to talk to him about it the first time, and she didn’t want to be the one who brought it up again, and she wasn’t sure if Kaito had even actually thought about it.

It was just after they’d gone through the paperwork of extending their lease on the house, a year and a half after moving in together, that something finally came of that original conversation. To celebrate signing up for living there for at least another year, they’d decided to have a nice date night at home, complete with fancy food and candles, and maybe even a little bit of expensive wine to mark the occasion. “I’m glad that we kept this bottle when we got it, just drinking it at random would’ve ruined its importance,” Kaito remarked as he read the label on the wine he’d fished out from one of the kitchen cupboards. “Still can’t believe we got this for goin’ to a wedding.”

“Oh god, you’re going to make us drink that piss-water?” At the mention of a wedding in regards to wine, Maki knew exactly when it was that they’d acquired the bottle, from being guests at Kyoko’s wedding the year before (something that wouldn’t have ever happened if her roommates hadn’t left in the first place). “I don’t know what she saw in it, it looks nasty and tastes worse than you’d expect. And you’re going to make us drink it, now?”

“Well, she did say it’s supposed to be saved for a special day, and I bet she meant our own wedding day but since that’s not happening…maybe we could do it tonight?” He looked past the bottle to see Maki’s dagger eyes shooting in his direction, and he chuckled, putting it back in the cupboard where he’d found it. “Fair, fair, we’ll put that one away and have somethin’ else, if that’s how you wanna be. Didn’t take you as a wine connoisseur, Maki Roll. When’d that happen?”

Her expression relaxed as she went back to fixing the salad she’d begun preparing. “Doing all these lunches with Kaede and her snooty musician friends, that’s when it happened. So many wine tastings, so many glasses that I’ve had to drink and pretend I like to not offend anyone. How she can put up with those people sober, I don’t even know.”

He stopped chuckling as he pulled another bottle of wine out, checked its label, and set it on the counter for her to see next time she looked over. “But you can touch them, so if they annoyed you enough you’d throttle ‘em, wouldn’t you?”

“I mean, I’d consider it, but then I’d get banned from the lunches and Kaede would have to suffer alone. She’s got enough on her plate right now, I don’t want to stress her out more.” Maki was referring to all of the slightly insane plans that Kaede had been coming up with in the recent weeks, from her own wedding to a benefit concert she was planning for a group of underprivileged children. How one woman thought that it was okay to put herself through that much in such a short amount of time, she didn’t know, but she did know that Kaede insisted she needed to stay of sound mind at all times so that she didn’t crack under the pressure she’d put on herself. “I bet as soon as all of this is over and done, she’s going to come over here and down that bottle of piss-water to get it off our hands.”

“If you’re not gonna ever drink it, I don’t see why that’d be a problem.” Making sure there weren’t any other hidden gems before he closed the wine cupboard’s door, Kaito glanced towards Maki to see her still chopping up ingredients for the salad and his hands twitched slightly, him strongly having to resist reaching towards her to give her some help. “You keep workin’ on that, I’m gonna start on getting everything else ready. We’re doin’ the whole plate tonight, right?”

“That’s what we decided before, yes.” Soon the kitchen was full of the sound of two different knives hitting cutting boards, rather than voices, but when Maki finally dumped all of her ingredients into the salad bowl and she looked over at the bottle of wine that had been left out for her, her face scrunched up. “Ugh, you’re going to make us drink that tonight? That’s the sweet stuff, that’s not—”

“I know it’s not something you like but you didn’t like the other option, and I think it’ll be best if we finish off the bottle now, rather than leave it to waste,” Kaito replied flippantly, knowing that the second bottle he’d grabbed had very little left in it because it was their go-to wine whenever they had special guests over, which wasn’t often. “My grandparents’ll understand why we don’t have any left next time they come by.”

She grabbed the bottle for herself and carried it and the salad to their small kitchen table, which had already been set for the evening. Pouring each of them half of what was left, she did take solace in the fact that there wasn’t even a full glass that she’d have to drink, but it was still something she was not looking forward to. Once she’d thrown the empty bottle out she took her seat and waited for Kaito to come in with the rest of the food, which he did several minutes later. “Not every day that we have such a formal dinner,” she said once he’d set down the plate of neatly-organized fish rolls and sauces. “Also not every day that we share this much between us, but it’s a special day.”

“Yeah, you’ve gotta put up with me for another year, I’d call that pretty special,” he joked, grabbing his glass of wine and holding it up. “C’mon, let’s toast to that. To bein’ together this long, and for bein’ together for the rest of ever.” She obliged, lifting her own glass and knocking it into his, before they each took a sip of the wine, her gagging at the aftertaste while he scrambled to start getting food to wash the taste out of his mouth. “Maybe we should’ve just gone with water for that,” he admitted after taking a couple bites of the salad and no longer tasting the acrid and fruity taste of the wine. “It would’ve been better.”

“I told you that’s the sweet stuff. No idea how anyone could drink that and enjoy it.” She’d resorted to blotting out the taste from her tongue with her napkin, meaning that all she could taste was the fabric, but at least the wine wasn’t on the tip of her tongue anymore. “I’m not much into wine, and let me tell you, I am fine with that. Those catty women at the lunches act like it’s a personality trait to like wine, when it tastes so nasty all the time.”

“Maybe there’s somethin’ to it that they’ve discovered that you haven’t?” he suggested. “Like, I don’t know, maybe they all have something in common that you’re missing?”

Maki shrugged, taking a couple bites of her own salad before coming up with any sort of answer. “I’m not sure what there could be, other than them all being musicians. But Kaede doesn’t act like that when she drinks, not that I remember. She doesn’t like the taste either, she drinks it because she feels she has to.”

“She really needs to find a different group of friends to take you to lunch with if that’s how they act, but you’re not thinkin’ hard enough, Maki Roll! They’ve gotta have something in common!” If they hadn’t been sitting to eat at their dinner table, Kaito would have certainly slammed his fist down to make emphasis, but he resorted to solely raising his voice instead. “I know you can come up with whatever it is, I believe in you!”

“Kaito, I really don’t think there’s anything else they have in common aside from being musicians. Sometimes a bad sense of taste is just that, and it’s not some weird group thing that I’m missing.” Maki looked at the barely-touched glass of wine and shook her head. “I gave it a try and that’s what matters. You’re not drinking yours either, so you can’t even give me crap about it.”

He heaved a sigh, grabbing his glass and looking her dead in the eyes before bringing it to his lips. “Watch me,” he told her, his voice echoing in the glass, before attempting to down the whole thing in one go. Predictably the moment he had more than a couple drops fill his mouth he was suffering, and he couldn’t get through another sip before he was nearly throwing the glass down, some of the liquid sloshing over its sides and onto the table. “Er, I guess you were right about that, probably shouldn’t have even attempted it.”

“I’d say,” she grumbled, getting up to grab some extra napkins to clean the mess with. When she came back she noticed that he was sitting in the same position she’d left him in, looking like he was suffering from the decision he’d made. “Clean it up your damn self, I’m not your mom and I’m not cleaning up your mistakes.”

As she threw the napkins at him, he broke from his frozen state to start laughing, nearly causing a second mess as he knocked the table and made everything shift. “Why’d you have to say it like that? I was gonna clean it up myself, sure, but you’re not my mom? Really? You thinkin’ about children again, Maki Roll?”

“What? I didn’t…” Realizing what she’d said way after the fact, she slumped back into her seat and began eating quickly, to try and prevent herself from needing to talk. There was only so long that the strategy would work, however, and the moment she couldn’t keep grabbing more food for fear of making herself sick she was left being stared down by Kaito and his amused expression. “Ugh, okay, maybe I have been thinking about kids again, but it’s only because we’ve got two bedrooms here and if we were seriously consider ever bringing kids into our lives we’d need to move to give them some space.”

“Or I could get a smaller bed and fit it in your room, and that frees up some space right there!” Kaito froze once again, the fact that he’d had that right there to present to her as evidence showing that he too had been thinking about the concept. “N-not like I’d be interested in doin’ that, though,” he said in an attempt to backpedal. “I’m fine with havin’ my own space.”

His attempt might have been well-intentioned, but Maki knew that they were discussing the elephant in the room and it was time to settle things. “Let’s just stop pretending like we don’t want children and figure out how to solve this problem like adults. We both want children, but we can’t have them the way literally any other couple could. Do you have any suggestions about how to fix that, mister ‘I haven’t made any extra money in years’?”

“Oh, uh, maybe one or two,” he admitted, a blush crawling up onto his cheeks. “I’ve been talkin’ this through with Shuichi, who brought Kyoko into things because she’s familiar with your problem and all that, and we might’ve come to a couple solutions. But they’re weird, I don’t know if you’re gonna like any of ‘em.”

“If they’re weird, I’m thinking you’re not talking about raising money to adopt a kid.”

“That’s on the list, don’t worry! I just, uh, you know, would like to…” He was getting flustered at what he was insinuating, and she didn’t know how to proceed from there other than to tell him to just lay the ideas on her and see if any stuck. Sure, she was completely aware that their financial situation wasn’t prime for having children, but if he’d somehow come up with an idea that wouldn’t put their money to waste, she was all ears.

The very first thing he suggested was one that had her go red all over, and he’d barely been able to keep a straight face in saying it, but it was by far the cheapest and most done-at-home thing he could suggest to her. It wasn’t going to be _harmful_ to try something as bizarre as that idea, and it could have had its benefits, and if it didn’t work there were other options to pick from. At any rate, giving it a shot meant that, for the first time in his life, Kaito was able to see his girlfriend in a state of undress that any normal boyfriend would’ve gotten to long before, even if he wasn’t going to be doing anything to her. And when it was all said and done, they were able to go back to doing their own thing and hoping for the best, but fully expecting the worst.

If it was the way that donors got to have their kids, then it was a perfectly acceptable way for a dating couple to try the same thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fun fact: this chapter was supposed to have another scene after it, but I got so carried away with these Important Conversations that the scene had to become the next chapter!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: violence, blood

A lot could change in the course of a single night, with a single decision spurred by a comment that had, at its core, been an insult. It wasn’t the most glamorous of ways to end up getting pregnant, that was for sure, but given everything that could have gone wrong, it was definitely one that felt the most rewarding, even if it did take several further attempts for something to actually stick. The moment she found out, after waking up many mornings in a row feeling completely off and not like herself, Maki made sure that she drove herself right to the office where Kaito worked to tell him in person, in front of all the other space nerds like himself, so that they could do the honors of the physical congratulating, since them hugging wasn’t going to happen.

The need for physical distance between the two of them had always been great, but it was never greater than during the long months of that pregnancy, because he wanted so badly to be able to cuddle her and tell her everything was going to be okay in the rough moments, and to hold her and reassure her that she was going to be fine whenever she began doubting her future as a parent. “It’s going to be like co-parenting in this house and I’m going to hate every second of it,” she whined, her head thrown back against the wall as she laid on the floor, stretching her legs as best as she could without hurting herself or putting her body through too much stress. “This child is going to grow up thinking we hate each other because we’re not like literally any other couple in the world.”

“That’s why we’re gonna make sure they know that we love each other! It’s not that hard to show love without bein’ touchy-feely, we’ve been doing it for a long time already!” Kaito was always insistent that things would be presented as completely normal to the child, even if every other family in the world functioned quite differently, and he was not going to budge on his stance on the matter, no matter how much Maki complained and grumbled her thoughts about it. She wanted to believe him, because everything they’d done so far had been at his insistence that it would all work out, but there was something about the idea of a completely unaware child entering the world and seeing people who claimed to love each other but kept their distance that made her hesitate. There was not really much of a way they could be certain their baby would know they loved each other, until years in the future, but she wanted to know that the kid would grow up thinking it was loved, at least.

And loved it was, by people far beyond its parents. All of their friends were eager and thrilled to know that they’d made something work (even though not as many of them felt quite the same after knowing _how_ they’d done it, with tools they had on hand at home), and they were willing to help out in any way they possibly could. There were promises of shopping trips and days spent setting up baby furniture, as well as arranging appointment and coming up with to-do lists for the mother-to-be. Like always, Maki hesitated on accepting the help, this time because she didn’t want to take someone’s kindness and accidentally kill a well-meaning doctor, but after careful vetting of all recommendations she was able to set up a support system of people she’d definitely never revived in the past. That, of course, meant that the only person who was never allowed to get hands-on at the appointments was Kaito himself, but he was used to it and after quickly explaining why he couldn’t touch, or hold hands, or really get too close, any tech or doctor in the exam rooms completely understood everything.

Growing a human life was _exhausting_ , much more tiring than stalking mafiosos in the dead of night or being mindful of who could or could not be touched. Every day felt like its own challenge, even with all of the love and support everyone was offering her, and Maki knew that things were only going to get worse for her over time. She’d already cut down how often she was involving herself in detective affairs, limiting the activity to mere morgue visits and the occasional stakeout, if Kyoko asked nicely enough. With all of the free time she’d managed to make for herself because of that decision, she’d taken up sharpening skills that she had been reliant on in her youth, mending and cooking and organizing.

If it had been up to her, she would have found somewhere to work to help balance finances a bit, but Kaito had sat her down and begged her to keep herself safe at home. “It’s not gonna work if you go out and stress yourself out and come home and pass out or somethin’ like that,” he told her, concern prevalent in his voice, as she muttered something about not needing to be treated like a child. “I get that you don’t want me bein’ protective of ya, but it’s what’s best for you, Maki Roll. I can handle everything outside of these walls, but I want you handlin’ what’s goin’ on within them.”

“I never thought I’d be a housewife,” she replied, looking him straight in the face as her eyes narrowed in disappointment, “but I also never thought that I’d not be able to keep helping people out there with my deathtaker abilities. It’s just…too much happening to me right now, I can’t live both lives I’ve been leading.”

“That’s why you’re stayin’ here, and I’ll make sure to hold you to that.” Maki wasn’t exactly sure where Kaito was so afraid of her going, but true to his word he arranged for her to have many assorted things to do at their house while he’d be away at work, and she’d reluctantly do each and every one of them. He’d come home and ask her what she accomplished that day, and she’d recount everything to him as if he hadn’t planned it himself, and that became their lives for the majority of the nine months she was carrying that child.

It was an exciting time in their lives, certainly, but Maki was looking forward to when it was all over and she could go back to being herself and not just the person with a baby inside of her. She wasn’t fond of the exhaustion she never could shake, and she hated that she couldn’t eat most of her favorite foods for one reason or another—half of them made her violently sick, and the other half she’d been told would be better to avoid while she was pregnant. The one upside to her sharp change in diet was that, at every appointment that she went to, she was applauded for putting on just about exactly the weight that she needed to ensure a healthy baby, and that she hadn’t let excuses allow her to make unwise choices.

She was fairly certain that people around her were jealous for her seemingly easy time being pregnant, as she began to hear horror stories of women who’d had a much worse experience than she was having. Everyone seemed to be jealous of how the only thing that had noticeably grown larger was her stomach, and even then it was still relatively small all things considered. There didn’t even seem to be a reason to point out that she was pregnant most of the time, because just looking at her up until the eighth month it looked like maybe she’d just gotten a little pudgy; after she hit eight months, though, she did hit a bit of a growth spurt and it became apparent that there was a baby growing inside her, but she by no means looked to be as far along as she was.

That did become a bit of an issue in the later weeks, as people would forget just how close to full-term she was and ask her to go out and do things with them, or to lend a hand in tasks she physically couldn’t do. “I’m pretty sure I’m completely restricted on lifting heavy things right now,” she pointed out on the day that her and Kaito’s friends came over to help rearrange their living room to accommodate for a baby’s things to be sharing the space. “Usually I’d be all about moving chairs, but…don’t want to cause myself any harm.”

“Oh, geez, yeah, can’t believe we forgot about that,” Kaede said with a stilted chuckle, bringing her fingertips to her lips as if she was biting her nails. “I mean, you’d think we’d have a hard time forgetting it, we’ve all been waiting so eagerly to get to meet that little one, but I…guess things slip from our minds, don’t they?”

“Says the one who keeps forgetting every piano practice she’s supposed to be tutoring at,” Maki replied without missing a beat, having heard plenty of stories about how Kaede would be in the middle of doing something completely unrelated, just to get a call asking her where she was and why she wasn’t at her practices. “It’s fine, though, whenever you decide to have kids I’ll make sure that I expect you to do things that you physically can’t.”

“See, that’s the difference between you and me, one of us will never look like she’s about to pop and the other will probably look like it right away.” Laughing again, Kaede dropped her hand as her eyes went wide, before she spun around to face Kaito instead, him across the room helping with moving one of his bookshelves covered in space-themed books. “Completely unrelated to that, Kaito, would you be interested in going to a show with me and Shuichi in a couple weeks?”

Nearly dropping the shelf in surprise at having a question being lodged at him, Kaito looked confused for a second before answering. “Why’re ya just asking me about it? Shouldn’t Maki Roll get a say in things too?”

“Yeah, shouldn’t I get a say in things?”

“We were just talking about how you can’t lift heavy stuff because of how close it is to baby time, weren’t we? I was thinking that you wouldn’t be interested in going because of that same reason, since it’s a formal event.” Kaede’s voice sounded so sunny and cheerful that it was hard to see a flaw in her logic, even as she kept her focus on Kaito and waited for his yes or no answer. “I’m not gonna be upset if you say no, because you want to be here with your girlfriend in case something happens, but…”

He pursed his lips together in thought before setting his end of the shelf down. “I really do wanna go, don’t get me wrong, but I think she should get to make the decision if she goes or not, instead of you makin’ it for her.”

“What kind of show is it?” Maki asked, actually curious about it so that she could make her final decision right then, rather than dragging things out any longer. “I might force myself to dress up for something if it sounds good enough, you know.”

“Oh, uh, it’s just a music show that I’ve helped put together, but it’s going to be the last night of it so I get to sit in the audience and enjoy it like a fan. It’s probably not anything you’d want to put in the effort to go to.” Sounding timid now that she had to actually explain what she was referring to, Kaede turned back to Maki to see her deep in thought, one hand playfully stroking her chin while the other had wrapped itself around her stomach. “Yeah, you can go ahead and say you’re not interested, I’m sure you’re totally thinking about how much of a pain it’d be to dress up that belly and I—”

Maki cut her off with a laugh. “It’s not that big of a deal, Kaede. We’ll go with you, I haven’t had an excuse to dress up in months anyway so it’ll be kind of nice to have one.”

“—wait, really?” The timidity in her voice disappeared completely and Kaede looked like she was going to go hug Maki in happiness for a moment before she remembered what would happen if she did. “I really was not expecting to hear that! We’ll have a great night at the show then, all four of us together!” From then on, every other sentence that came out of Kaede’s mouth had something to do with the show and what she hoped would happen at it, with it being the last of six nights in a row where these students performed. All of the other sentences were about babies and Maki and how she was still surprised that someone who would be so close to giving birth would be willing to go out like that, but Maki played them off as someone being a bit too worried about her.

The day of the show, though, she was reconsidering her life choices from the moment she woke up in her bed and felt the same exhaustion she’d been struggling with for months, as well as the aches and pains she’d gotten accustomed to in the recent weeks. She could feel every lurch and movement in her body and felt like they were all amplified tenfold, but she didn’t think anything of it and forced herself up and at her daily tasks like she always did. It was somewhere close to noon that Kaito dragged himself out of bed and met her just outside the kitchen, his eyes half-lidded and his hair completely askew. “The show’s tonight, yeah?” he asked, as if that was the only thing on his mind at the moment. “And we’re still goin’ to it with them?”

“Yes, and yes,” she replied, leaning into the counter to work on stretching her back, which had a strange sensation of pain coursing through it at the moment. “It’ll be fine, I bet Kaede’s super excited for this day to finally be here. All she’s done for the past five days is stress about the performances she’s been on stage for, now she gets to sit back and relax for the very last one.”

“Maybe you need to sit back and relax too, you’re not lookin’ so hot right now.” His eyes widening as he watched her attempting to stretch without anything but the counter to support her, Kaito was seconds away from commanding for her to have a seat before she stood up, perfectly fine. “I’m gonna keep my eye on you, Maki Roll. You’re starting to worry me about everything.”

She silenced him with a roll of her eyes, as she began preparing herself lunch like she’d initially gone into the kitchen to do. “Just like the show tonight will be fine, there’s nothing for you to worry about with me. There’s still plenty of time before anything happens, I promise you.” Internally she knew that she was bluffing, knowing that the time they had before their child would be born was limited, but she didn’t want to worry Kaito more than he already had worried himself. “Besides, once we’re there I shouldn’t be doing too much aside from sitting and watching, so there, that’s where you’ll get me to sit back and relax.”

“I don’t know, something’s just screaming at me to not believe you but…you’d know best, wouldn’t you?” She nodded and he shrugged it off, chalking up his concern as nerves that were firing too early. “After tonight, though, we’re done with havin’ fun and doing wild things until after the baby’s born, got it?”

“No reason to say otherwise.” All it had taken was that stretching to get her body to not feel quite as uncomfortable as it had, and she’d gone through plenty of discussions with doctors about what the moments before labor would feel like so she was certain it wasn’t right around the corner. She knew that she was playing with fire doing much more than having a restful day and an exciting night that day, so she wasn’t going to argue with Kaito about what she should or shouldn’t do after their planned night out. “Let’s make sure we make this night matter, because it might be our last memorable one for a while.”

He grinned, shooting her a thumbs-up to express his approval. “You got it! We’ll have a great time, a show with some friends and dinner after, with nothin’ else to do except kick back and watch some students perform to their heart’s content. I wonder if any of ‘em will be playing songs about the stars…”

The rest of their afternoon went by as it usually did when they were together, keeping their distance but making sure that they were close enough to have conversation and keep tabs on what the other was doing with their time. As the day went on, and it grew closer to when they needed to get ready, Maki could feel that sense of something being off flooding her body again, and she decided to treat it by taking a short nap before she had to get dressed for the show. Unfortunately for her, her exhausted body was so desperate for a good chunk of sleep that she missed her alarm and had to be woken up by Kaito yelling her name, telling her she needed to get dressed so they could leave.

At once, all of her plans she’d made for the night felt like they’d been ruined, and after she managed to pull herself out of bed every step she took felt like she had the weight of a million bricks resting on her shoulders. “Kaede’s just going to have to get over it that I’m not looking super formal,” she grumbled, grabbing her dress and flat sandals off of the rack she’d put them on before going into the bathroom to change. Dressing up was the easy part, but she had no time for makeup or for doing much with her hair, opting to pull it up into a gigantic messy bun to at least keep it out of the chair she’d be sitting in.

“I still think you managed to make yourself look nice, even in a rush,” Kaito told her, blowing a kiss in her direction when he got a full look at what she was wearing. The dress seemed a bit short, but it had been in Maki’s closet from years before and she hadn’t wanted to go buy something she’d need to wear one time, and thankfully it stretched enough to fit her without being too restraining. The sandals were also from a previous summer, and were tight on her swollen feet, but they didn’t seem to be causing her too much pain to walk in them. “You’ll probably be the nicest dressed woman there, if you ask me.”

“You might just be obligated to think that,” she reminded him, waggling a finger in his direction before grabbing her small purse and making her way to the door, him following behind her several steps. “We’ll just have to see if your bias is showing, which, in my opinion, it definitely is.”

“H-hey now, you do look super nice! I’m not just sayin’ that!”

Their conversation the whole way to the concert hall was about what they expected from the show, to keep their minds off of anything else that was relevant in their lives. Based on how many times he kept looking over at her, Maki was sure that Kaito couldn’t stop thinking about how she looked, but he didn’t want to bring it up and bring attention to the fact that it might not have been the best of ideas for them to have gone through with things after all. It was intended to be their last night doing things just the two of them, it felt appropriate that things would work out for them that one time before everything changed.

In most respects, that was exactly how it went, but there was one aspect that could have gone much better had they thought it through. It was after the show’s intermission, when Kaede had made them spend the whole break on stage talking to her students and learning background stories about the pieces they were performing, and even though there was music playing and the doors to the auditorium were closed to keep things respectful, Maki had the irresistible urge to get up and go move around. “Where do you think you’re going?” Kaede harshly whispered in her direction as she stood up in her aisle seat and began moving around. “You can’t leave when someone’s performing!”

“I just…have to go,” she replied, and Kaede stiffened up, looking at her with worried eyes before swallowing down her reservations and nodding in understanding. “I’ll be back, don’t worry about me. If anything goes wrong I’ll send someone to find you.”

There wasn’t anything that Maki thought was going to go wrong, she was merely covering her bases and keeping everyone from worrying too much. If he hadn’t been so enamored by the show itself Kaito certainly would have been trying to fight for her to stay, but without his attention on what she was doing she was able to slip out fairly easily. The man at the door took one look at her and how she was clearly pregnant and let her out of the auditorium without question, and once she was outside the heavy door it was closed on her and she wasn’t getting back inside until the next break in the music. Once again, every step she was taking felt insanely difficult, her whole body shuddering with aches here and there, but the thought of sitting down again didn’t mesh well in her mind. She needed to move, she needed to pace, she needed to be doing something that wasn’t just relaxing.

Her eventual destination was the closest bathroom, for no reason other than that being where her feet took her, but before she pushed the door open she could clearly hear voices on the other side. At once her past caught up with her and she pressed her ear close to the door to listen in, wondering what could be going on to have male voices so loud in a women’s restroom; when she heard the gruff tones and the talk of threats all of her training to protect people kicked in, and without thinking much about her physical state she pushed opened the door and charged in to see what was happening.

The two men inside looked between each other before looking at her, one popping his knuckles while the other paused in thought as he scanned her face. These were mafia men she’d dealt with before, she immediately noticed, but if they’d previously died she couldn’t remember, not with the panic that overtook her brain. “Aren’t you a familiar one,” the one observing her said, reaching into his pocket to grab a small knife, similar to ones she’d used for protection when she was on the job. Easy to conceal, easy to make a stealth attack with, easy to clean. “Looks like the years ain’t been too kind to you, ol’ deathtaker. What, they run out of spry models to send after people?”

“What are you doing in here?” she asked, ignoring the fact that the man had called out her talent and had insulted what she looked like in just a few words. “Last time I checked, you should be in jail and not in the women’s bathroom at a concert hall. Are you here to fill a hit on someone’s life?”

She could see them both restraining themselves, the instinct to lash out and silence whoever challenged them needing suppression when they knew who it was they were dealing with. “Maybe, maybe not,” the one with the knife answered, flipping the blade open and closed a few times to try and convince her to back off. “What’s it to ya? Not like you’ll be chasin’ us down in that sorry state.”

“Yeah,” the other one laughed, “they must’ve thought t’send the most outta shape person to try stoppin’ us! What’s she gonna do, run outta breath and let us get away?”

Maki glanced at the door she was standing in front of from the corner of her eyes, not wanting to make it obvious that she’d accidentally cornered them anyway. “I’m not here to deal with you, I’m here for my own personal reasons that didn’t involve being harassed by a bunch of thugs in the bathroom. Now you’re going to let me do my thing and you’re going to leave everyone here alone, got it?”

“Who’s gonna back up that threat? You got friends somewhere?” The thugs decided that it was high time to start making a physical attempt at intimidating her, even as she raised her hands and held them towards them both. The one with the knife was the scarier of the two, and seemed to be the brains of the operation, barking out, “Put on ya damn gloves and grab the wench, good thing we prepared for not leavin’ prints when we did our work, or else we’d be in a bit of a pickle here.”

“Gloves, got it.” As the other man rummaged through his pockets looking for gloves, drug money and merchandise falling to the floor in his search, Maki felt what she could only describe as a splitting pain in her abdomen, and she winced, bracing herself on the wall as she rode out the wave of pain. All the while, the one with the knife was still standing there, still brandishing his weapon, still ready to make a mess in a bathroom he had no business being in.

She closed her eyes for a second, and in that time she felt the rush of something flying dangerously close to her face, clipping her ear before hitting the tiled wall behind her. “How did that miss?” the ringleader man asked, procuring another knife that was much bigger than the previous one. Terrified as she could feel blood dripping from the cut, landing on her shoulder, Maki’s eyes locked completely on the man who was out to kill her, while his companion pulled out the gloves he’d been looking for and slipped them on his hands. “Oh well, guess we’ll take this elsewhere. Grab her and hold her down nice and tight, best to have one distraction out of the way before we make the kill we’re here for.”

Panic was overtaking Maki’s body, even though she knew how to defend herself and protect her life in such a scenario. She was certain she’d killed these men before, and as long as she could get her skin on theirs she could save herself, it just required things working out for her. Otherwise, she’d end up dead and there’d be other fatalities that night, and there was no way she was going to let her weakness let that happen. She couldn’t bring herself to move as the brittle plastic gloves touched her arms and restrained them, the man making it a point to jerk her around as he got her into a position where she wasn’t going to be moving her upper body. “I’m sorry that things have to be this way,” she quietly said, hoping that her attempt at making a so-called prayer was heard by the men, just as a last-ditch effort to save herself.

“Speak up, ya dumb bitch!” the one with the knife hollered. “We wanna hear ya beggin’ for your life, after what you’ve done to our gang!”

Her feet were being led in the direction towards her demise, but she was going to remain resilient until the end. “I said, I’m sorry that things have to be this way. Is that a problem?”

“Hell yeah it’s a problem! You’ve done nothin’ but cause trouble for all ‘a us, bein’ the deathtaker and thinkin’ you’re better than the rest ‘a us! We showed up here tonight to kill some rich bitch and we get an even better kill under our belts. Lucky us!” She was within range of the man’s vile breath, able to see his rotten teeth and the sores on his skin with full clarity; this man belonged to one of the many drug rings she’d had to infiltrate in the past, full of people she’d thought she’d made see the light. “Now c’mere you ugly woman, it’s time you meet the fate you’ve put everyone else through.”

The knife was coming at her from above, aiming right for her throat, and Maki wasn’t sure if her physical limitations would allow her to pull off what she was about to try. “The person I’m sorry for isn’t myself!” she bellowed, kicking one of her legs as high as she could, intercepting the man’s hand with her sandal-wearing foot, the skin contact immediately causing him to go stiff. She felt nothing but pain from her toes to her chest, the muscle strain she’d just forced herself through not playing nicely with the other issues she had, but as the dead man fell backwards she could feel her arms being released and his friend backing away from her with heavy breathing. “Don’t think you’re getting away either,” she said, turning herself around once her foot was back on the ground. “I’m not playing nice right now.”

“I-I wasn’t plannin’ on hurtin’ ya,” he whimpered, hands raised in defense of himself, but she was angry and she wasn’t going to let him fool her. One simple slap across the face was enough to put an end to him, and when his head knocked against the floor she felt she should’ve had a sense of victory about herself for a moment, before reality sank in and she was brought to her knees in pain from her leg and from her stomach.

It took a couple minutes for her to collect herself, and knowing that it would be best to handle things elsewhere she made her way out of the bathroom, found the first attendant that she could to let them know there’d been an incident in the women’s restroom, and eventually reentered the auditorium, where the show was still in progress. Her steps were slow and she was having to take in deep breaths to keep herself from losing control, but she made it back to her seat and tried to act like nothing had happened outside of the show, just to keep a sense of normalcy about things.

That changed when the lights came on in the room long before the show would have been over, and the crowd was alerted that there had been a violent act that took place in one of the building’s facilities. “Maki Roll, that had nothing to…” Kaito began asking, turning to look at his girlfriend, only to find her biting her lip, trying to keep herself from screaming out in pain, with one sleeve of her dress completely stained with blood. “Oh geez, it did, didn’t it? Why’d ya go out there and start a fight?”

“I didn’t choose to,” she insisted once she could find the power to speak, “and I think there’s a lot more important things to be worried about right now than me facing down two thugs when all I needed to do was take a walk.” There was a silent understanding of what she meant, no one feeling the need to ask her to clarify that she meant what the implications were, and that put an end to their night out at the concert.

However, it did not put an end to their night out overall, because they weren’t going home right then. The logical thing to do was to get her medical attention, for the myriad of things wrong with her in that very moment, but the police had already swarmed the lobby at that point and she wasn’t going to be getting to leave the building anytime soon, being the one who’d been directly involved in the drug deal gone wrong. No amount of reminding people she was the deathtaker was enough to get her out of things, nor was the fact that she was in some early stage of labor, and so Maki was forced to sit against a wall in the lobby to await questioning from as many officers as they thought were needed to solve a crime that she could’ve easily explained in seconds.

The one thing that made them release her was incredibly mortifying for her, but if her claiming that she was having labor pains wasn’t enough, the small puddle of fluids that had come from inside her _was_ , and so after she insisted over and over that her water had just broken and that she needed to go she was allowed to leave. It was beyond ridiculous that it had taken something of that magnitude to get her released from the loose custody they were holding her in, but by that point the police knew that her story matched the crime scene and that she hadn’t done anything wrong, so she was able to leave without further escort.

There was a room waiting for her at the hospital when they all got there, the four going together even though only two of them needed to be present. Because of the uniqueness to the situation, they’d already made plans to accommodate the fact that the parents could not touch each other in any way (even wearing gloves felt risky, if Maki acted in a moment that lacked clarity and grabbed Kaito above where the gloves ended), and the doctors had been expecting those accommodations from the very beginning. It was a long, sleepless night that dragged into an even less restful day, everyone on edge for what they knew was coming.

Somewhere in the mid-afternoon that following day, the actual birthing process began and everyone had to take their positions to make sure everyone came out of things alive. It was a natural reaction for the father to want to hold the mother’s hand, but since he couldn’t Kaito had accepted holding Kaede’s hand instead, her letting him grip it just as tightly as he thought he’d be gripping Maki’s right then. Because they could hold hands without any issues, Shuichi had reluctantly given his own up to let Maki hold, a decision he regretted after her first hard squeeze that nearly broke his skin with her nails, but he knew he was doing his friends both a favor by doing it.

That labor went long into the night, until they’d been at the hospital for over a day straight with no baby to speak of. There were times where curses were flung and complaints were lodged about making this choice in the first place, but when the room was filled with gulping screams from a newborn child in the early morning hours, everyone present completely exhausted yet able to admire in pride of what they were hearing, all of the issues seemed to magically disappear. Tears were shed by multiple of the people in the room, hugs exchanged by those who could give them, and when a cleaned-up and completely healthy baby was set in his mother’s waiting arms all Maki could think was that she’d chalked herself up to never finding such a moment in her life with someone she loved. The chubby-faced baby that she was holding was _hers_ , and not just hers but Kaito’s as well, and they would get to love him and watch him grow up and raise him together, sharing in his love and affection even though they couldn’t share their own.

When it came to it, watching the newborn hold one parent’s finger in one hand and the other’s in the other was the most affectionate thing they’d done for each other without risking death, and something about that fact sparked a desire in both their hearts to never let anything take away what they had right then.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh boy you'd think this story would be getting happier now that we're into the stuff I'm more familiar with writing, but...no.
> 
> FROM HERE ON OUT, expect more death, more despair, and more heartbreak. lots of problematic concepts will appear.


	5. Chapter 5

Overall, minus the long nights and dragging days caused by the presence of an ever-needy child, their lives didn’t change too much in the months after Hitoki’s birth. If anything at all, things stayed relatively the same as they had always been, but the togetherness brought by his needs and wants that he couldn’t vocalize in any way but screaming was something new, something that had been sorely needed. Before, if there was any reason for Kaito and Maki to be near each other, they acted in fear of what _could_ happen; with the child around who needed them just as much as they needed him, they couldn’t allow themselves to be held back by fear. They needed to do whatever it took to make sure that the child was fine.

And if that meant narrowly avoiding disaster by having to use a blanket to transfer him from one set of arms to the other, then that was a sacrifice that needed to be made. Hitoki grew up fast, it felt, but there was plenty of time for his parents (and their friends) to savor in his infant moments. Every day felt like a new beginning, a new chance to make things right, and that little boy felt like he was going to be the catalyst that permanently changed everything. On occasion Maki feared that he would have inherited her deathtaking ability, just like he’d inherited her dark hair and red eyes (although for a long while they’d remained pink, which was amusing to look at on such a serious face), but if he had that wasn’t going to be something they’d know until far in the future, if ever. Kaito too questioned what traits he would have picked up, if he’d have a weakness in regards to developing illnesses or if he’d be perfectly healthy, and for a first-time parent that seemed like such an innocent and normal thing to be thinking about, unlike what Maki was going over in her mind.

His birth did signal a change in the way their entire group of friends began to act, although it could have been argued that the change had come when someone some of them knew through Kyoko (and her husband) had gone and adopted several underprivileged teenagers. They were overall acting more mature, more like the adults their ages claimed they were, and with that shift in everyone’s mind more and more children seemed to be popping up here and there. Even with a young one that needed constant attention, Maki kept receiving invitations to social gatherings to celebrate children whose births were on the horizon, and despite knowing what was in her best interest she would drag Hitoki along with her to each and every one, and Kaito on specific occasions as well.

There was a sense of pride that came over her whenever she’d walk into someone else’s baby shower with her own son and all of the attention would fall on him for just a moment. It felt like she could live vicariously through him, garnering all of the affection and praise the people talking to him physically could not give to her, and even though it felt selfish she fully intended to use her child as a way to get the love she’d always craved. If it worked for her relationship with her boyfriend, it could’ve worked for everyone else as well—but she stopped herself from doing it when she realized that it wasn’t her choice to be making. Someday that child would grow up and be able to tell her how he felt about strangers fawning over him, and if it wasn’t what he wanted then she’d feel bad for forcing him through it, even if it was what she’d wanted.

A drawback to attending all of the festivities reared its ugly head soon enough, and she was left reeling from the audacity of it being brought up in the first place that she very nearly swore off attending the events for a while. It was one of those friends of Kyoko’s that she’d gotten to know through being her roommate, asking a question that felt so wrong to Maki that she was offended it had ever been asked. “What if the child dies before it’s born?” she asked in worry, looking between Maki and Hitoki as she waited for her answer. When one never came she spat, “Not like I’d ever need to know that for _myself_ , I was thinking more about others.”

“Why would I know the answer to that?” she shot back, instinctively drawing her son in closer to her as he looked around with his wide, unknowing eyes, still too young to grasp what was going on around him even if he was beginning to recognize people and places. “I dealt with criminals and dying friends, do you think I’ve ever thought about what happens if a kid dies?”

“Well, maybe you should’ve considered that before you had one for yourself, since you don’t know what would’ve happened if he’d perished.” How badly Maki wanted to reach over with a free hand and choke the woman (not killing her, she’d never been revived by her lifegiving ability, but doing enough damage to make her regret what she’d said), but she refrained by packing up her things and leaving. Even a handful of missed calls from Kyoko, confused as to what had happened to make her leave in the first place, was not enough to get her to apologize for her abrupt disappearance, but it was enough to make her rethink attending people’s baby showers for several months.

There was one single, glimmering exception to that exclusion from events, and it was one that Maki would not have missed for the world. She might not have been able to physically congratulate the mother-to-be, but she wanted to be present for her big day no matter what the cost was, especially since she knew that of all the people in the world that didn’t live under her roof, the ones who always had her back would be Shuichi and Kaede. “Of all the things I’m looking forward to about this, there’s one thing I wish I wouldn’t have to experience,” Shuichi said to Maki during the day’s festivities. “I can’t imagine that Kaede’s going to go quite as easy on my hand as you did.”

“Implying that I went easy, please,” she replied with a laugh, honestly unable to remember how hard, exactly, she’d been squeezing the hand of the man who’d stepped in to help her in such an important time. “I would’ve gotten Kaito just as hard, if I was able to. Which I…probably would’ve been, I didn’t grab your arm or anything, did I?”

“No, and that’s something you can keep in mind for next time. Er, if there’s a next time, that is, I don’t want to assume things.” It was a point that Maki had thought about many times before, never really sure of how to bring it up to Kaito, but Shuichi seemed to already believe that they were going to make that decision eventually. Given his track record of knowing things about people without them admitting it to others, it was a telling moment that she had to keep to herself until she could speak to her boyfriend about it. “Anyway, having been there for you through this, I’m not too nervous, but I know that she is, which I’m sure is more normal than what I’m feeling.”

“Yeah, not everyone gets to be present for the birth of a completely unrelated child. Then again, not everyone is best friends with a deathtaker who decided to get in a relationship with one of her own victims.” Maki sighed, looking across the brightly-decorated room to see where Kaito was carrying Hitoki above his head, the little boy screeching in delight as he was zoomed from place to place. “Do I regret doing that? Hell no. Do I wish there was some way to make things easier? Yes, without a doubt.”

Shuichi nodded, also looking in Kaito’s direction, before standing up from his chair and offering Maki a hand to get to her feet, which she accepted. “I’m sure something will come your way one of these days, and if it doesn’t, then at least you’ve got Hitoki around to help bridge the gap. I’ve never seen you and Kaito quite as happy as I have with you playing with him, I can tell you that much.”

“You really think so?” She had no reason not to believe him, but inside Maki was wondering if Shuichi was actually speaking the truth or if he was just trying to distract her from something. At once, an irrational fear began to gnaw at her, making her question his true intentions over and over again, even after he’d walked away and she was left standing there, just looking at everyone who’d gathered for the occasion. Everyone else seemed to have the bright idea to have their baby shower in a place large enough to prevent elbows from bumping on accident, which wasn’t a thought she’d had back when she’d had the chance to have one. It meant that she could easily stand in one place, or eventually sit back down like she did, and watch everyone having the time of their lives celebrating a child who wasn’t among them quite yet.

Maki was beyond happy for her closest friends to be having a child of their own, who was going to be just about a year younger than Hitoki, because it meant that her little boy would have a friend to play with during adult get-togethers, and that she’d have some sort of way to shower a piece of Kaede with affection. Thinking about things like that was another sort of distraction, one that related back to her use of her son to get affection from others, but she was used to that kind of diversion going on in her mind. Her thoughts were broken when she saw the upside-down face of her little boy hanging in front of her, cheeks reddened to match his eyes and his thick hair standing on end. “Did ya know that everyone seems to love complimenting him?” Kaito asked her, as he flipped the boy back around. “It’s been nothin’ but compliments since we got here. Kinda strange, don’t ya think?”

“It happens every time we go somewhere, you must not pay enough attention to it.” Even though she knew that Hitoki was constantly showered with love from people, the fact that it typically only happened when she was around hadn’t dawned on Maki until that moment. It must have been Kaito’s first taste of what she was so used to, what she hadn’t realized she craved for herself until her child was getting it. “Anyway, that’s great for him, but have you been telling everyone he’s not the point of today?”

“Been trying to, but they’re kinda insistent. Also doesn’t help that Kaede keeps trying to get me to give him to her. What does she even need with him right now?” Flipping the boy over again, so that he shrieked and laughed and looked like he was having a good time, Kaito could see the gears turning in Maki’s mind, but when she couldn’t come up with an answer he moved right along. “I guess I probably could hand him over for a couple minutes, she probably just wants a real baby to hold in her arms.”

“I mean, you can, but she’ll have one of those soon enough.” There wasn’t a single part of what Maki had said that wasn’t true: Kaito _could_ lend their child out for a little while, and it was getting rather close to when Kaede would have a child of her own to love on and snuggle. She knew, though, that the big reason why Kaede wanted Hitoki in specific was because of who his mother was, and how she could show thanks for their friendship by being doting on the child, but she wasn’t going to tell Kaito that. “You do what you want, you’re the one having fun playing with him.”

That conversation replayed in Maki’s head for the rest of the time they were there, after watching Kaito nod and take the boy over to the person of honor for the party, hanging around her until he had the child back in his care. She shouldn’t have sounded like it was a problem to let someone else hold him, when she frequently let others do just that when it was her choice to make. She shouldn’t have been holding that fact so tightly to her chest, either, even though she knew Kaito wouldn’t mind knowing the truth. She should have just told him that she really did know why Kaede had wanted Hitoki in the first place and let things fall naturally from there, but she was being secretive and had been for so long that she couldn’t help it.

With that baby shower out of the way, there was nothing much for them to focus on other than setting up a good first birthday party for the boy, and since they both wanted to make it memorable and exciting, they devoted quite a bit of time to making it happen. With the fact that his birthday was going to be on a weekday, and that at least one newborn was going to be in attendance, as well as the typical issues that arose whenever Maki was involved in something, some creative strings had to be pulled to make sure that everything would work out just fine. A day spent indoors in a pastel-colored world felt like the safest option, they decided, and putting the effort into making it happen became the top priority in their lives.

Having laid down in bed after a day full of tending to a mobile boy weeks shy of his first birthday, Maki was ready to start going through the mental outline of her plans for the celebration but she fell asleep without any struggle. Her wake-up call came in the form of a literal phone call, her phone blaring on her nightstand at some late hour, and she groggily sat up and grabbed it, hearing Hitoki screaming in his crib from the sound disrupting his sleep. The name on the screen was Shuichi’s, and her heart immediately sank into her stomach as she answered the call. “What’s going on? Why are you calling me so late?” she asked in a frantic whisper, trying not to make her son’s crying worse by sounding upset.

“I-I didn’t know who else to call,” Shuichi replied, panic evident in his voice. “I thought about trying Kyoko but I knew you…you’d be…”’

The churning feeling in the pit of her stomach was getting worse, the pounding in her chest doing nothing to help matters. “What is there that I can do for you that she can’t? If it’s about Kaede you _know_ I can’t do anything.”

“It’s n-not about Kaede, not exactly…”

“Then what is it? Spit it out, you already woke Hitoki up calling me and I’m not letting him wake up the neighbors.” She didn’t mean to sound so brash, but the crying was getting worse and she knew it wasn’t going to be enough to wake Kaito up, by any means. “You have three seconds before I hang up.”

She heard Shuichi try to say something, but he was clearly being wracked by sobs and couldn’t form audible words. As much as she wanted to be able to help him out, she needed to stop her child from crying and so she hung up the call and climbed out of bed, setting her phone back down on the nightstand before crossing the room to pick up Hitoki. The boy looked even more distraught in the darkened room than he usually did when he needed attention at night, but holding him was already getting him to calm down slightly; that changed when she got back over to her bed and her phone was ringing again. Maneuvering so that she could have the boy resting in her lap with a pacifier in his mouth to try calming him, she picked up the phone a second time to answer Shuichi’s call. “We need you to come over here,” he choked out, before she could say a word about how she’d given him his chance. “Before they decide to…do something on their own. Maki, it’s horrible, you’ve got to fix this for us.”

“Fix what, exactly?” It was so early in the morning that Maki’s mind wasn’t working correctly, and she didn’t know what he could be referring to if it was bringing someone back to life she’d already healed once. “You need to give me details.”

“Something went wrong, they said the baby’s not going to live, and I—no, _we_ —need you to change that.” Those words made Maki’s blood run cold, as she looked down at her fitful but slowly growing content child in her lap, then over to Kaito as he still slept without a clue as to what was going on. Her silence must have dragged on, because Shuichi had to ask if she was still there, followed with, “Please, Maki, if Kaede wakes up to find out that everything went wrong she’ll never forgive herself.”

“I…I’ll be right over. Send me where to meet you and I’ll be there.” He gave her several thanks before hanging up, and she set her phone down, numb to the motions she was making. Taking Hitoki with her wasn’t an option, and even if it was she didn’t have the time to get him ready as well as herself, but she couldn’t just leave him to cry again once she put him back in his crib. She was forcing herself to take deep breaths as she got up, carefully set the boy on the bed, and began getting dressed in the dark bedroom. Honestly, she had no idea what she was putting on, if it was even hers to begin with, but when she felt she was properly dressed she grabbed Hitoki and carried him over to his father’s bed, removing the pacifier from his mouth to get him to start screeching in surprise.

Almost at once, the presence of such a loud sound so close to him made Kaito’s eyes shoot open and he was looking to Maki in confusion as she pacified the child once more before setting him right in the crook of the blankets Kaito was laying under. “Are you goin’ somewhere?” he asked, barely coherent enough to form the words. “Should I be going too?”

“No, you stay here and watch Hitoki, I’ll be back as soon as possible.” Her throat felt raw as she spoke, and as much as she would have loved to have clued Kaito in on what was happening, the last thing she needed was him forcing himself into the situation when his presence would not be wanted. When she heard her phone go off she turned and went to check it, finding that she’d received the information she’d requested, and she looked over her shoulder, seeing Kaito sitting himself up without jostling the child too much. “Kaito, I’m telling you, I’ll be back as soon as possible. You need to stay here.”

“I get that, but…why aren’t you gonna tell me where you’re going? It’s the middle of the night, Maki! I can’t go back to sleep knowing you’re off doing something!” He was making it hard for her to commit to leaving him in the dark, but she couldn’t waste anymore time there at the house, not when a life was at risk.

She grabbed everything that she needed to take with her and told him, “Where I’m going is not for me, just…go back to sleep, don’t worry about a thing.” It was for the best that he had to be mindful of their child, because she knew that he would have chased her down and potentially made a costly mistake in the process, but because he was saddled with keeping the baby occupied he couldn’t follow after her.

The whole time it took her to get to the hospital Maki was crying, her eyes often flooded with enough tears to obscure her vision. She didn’t know why this was making her so emotional, it might have been because it was happening to friends who didn’t deserve it, or because it was such an early hour that she was emotionally vulnerable. Never in her life had she expected to be called on to handle such a horrifying task, and she’d been responsible for a lot of nasty things over her life thus far. There was someone waiting outside the entrance for her, to act as a valet for her so that she could get inside quicker, and when she handed off her keys to the gloved hand the man bowed his head and gave her a thanks, referring to her as the deathtaker before getting into her car.

Shaking that off took a lot of effort, and by the time she was inside and saw a completely frantic Shuichi waiting for her, she hadn’t quite forgotten how important that man had made her feel. “We have to get you cleared to go inside,” Shuichi explained after grabbing Maki into a hug that lasted for what felt like hours, both of them crying at the other’s touch. “It’s going to take a couple minutes for us to be let in, but…hopefully that’s not too long.”

“No point in standing here talking then, if we’re on a time crunch,” she replied, wiping at her eyes with the long sleeve of the sweater she’d put on in place of an actual shirt. “Show me where we need to go, I’m not familiar with coming in this way.” He nodded and they walked down the completely empty hall together, the smell of cleaning solutions evident with every breath they took. Their destination was a desk up on the second floor, where the nurse on duty waved Shuichi through and took one look at Maki’s face before letting her follow along. They were taken into a small room, where they were given masks and gloves and wiped down to make sure they weren’t carrying anything harmful on them, before draped in protective gowns and sent back out into the hall.

From there, Shuichi was able to take her down to a room abuzz with activity, the door firmly shut until he’d pressed the button next to the handle to unlock it, a doctor greeting them in the doorway and allowing them both to enter. It seemed like a standard birthing suite, minus the fact that there were far too many machines inside to make it feel normal. In the bed, Kaede seemed to be fast asleep, although the multitude of devices attached to her made it clear that she was under anesthesia, for at least the moment, and across the room was a quiet, cold incubator that made Maki’s whole body stiffen to see. “It all happened so fast, I don’t even know how to explain it…” Shuichi’s voice was quiet, almost detached from his body, as they both came completely inside the room. “One minute we thought that everything was going to be fine, the next they told us that it was all wrong, and I…and we…”

“You don’t have to explain anything to me, just…let me handle it.” So many thoughts were racing through Maki’s mind as she walked over to the shut-off incubator, not wanting to look inside to see what she knew was waiting for her. The prominent thought was that her friends had _not_ deserved this, they hadn’t done anything to warrant such a horrible thing happening to them, and as she came closer she began removing the glove from one hand, knowing that the choice she was going to make was one that she could not go back on. “I’ve never done this for a baby before,” she admitted, turning her eyes away from the completely still child in front of her, not wanting to burn that image into her memory. “Small children, sure, but never someone who never had the chance to do anything wrong.”

A lot of the time, she wished that she wasn’t given such a serious role in life as the deathtaker, but in that moment she felt less like she was taking death from a stillborn child and instead giving life. All it took was one touch with the tip of her finger, pressing somewhere on the face of the lifeless body, and everything changed, tragedy turning into a true miracle. The medical staff, all aware that the deathtaker had been brought into the room, watched and listened in awe of the blessing that had been bestowed upon the child, hearing a first breath come that they’d all written off as never happening.

Now that she’d done what should have been impossible, Maki stepped back and let the staff take control, but not before glancing down at the bundled baby that had been dead up until moments before. She felt like she was back meeting Hitoki the first time, looking into the face of a child that she felt endless love towards, but the brutal reality was that she’d never be able to show how much she cared about that little miracle there in the incubator. It was a price that had to be paid, but it was much less than the price that would have been paid if she hadn’t been called in to help.

She went home after that, leaving the hospital without saying much to her one awake friend about what had happened, and by the time she’d gotten home she’d missed call after call from him. The next time she spoke to him was later that day, after she’d gotten some needed rest, and after the multitude of thank yous were given, he dropped another piece of news down on her: they’d decided to name the girl Makika, after the woman who’d saved her.

* * *

Realizing that so many people she knew owed so much to her, Maki understood that she needed to step back and make sure that she didn’t start risking lives that weren’t her own without meaning to. She’d already gotten to be good at distancing herself from her friends to a point, but now that there were children (innocent, completely innocent) children in the mix, she had to approach things differently than she ever had before. It would have been far too easy to bring death towards the sweet little girl she’d saved, so after talking things through with Kaito, she decided that she’d be limiting her time spent with Kaede and Shuichi to the bare minimum, as long as Makika was around. Everything she had planned up to that point was thrown to the wayside to protect those who needed it, and even though that meant her son’s first birthday was spent as a strictly family affair, it was for the best.

But that was not to say that Kaito and Hitoki couldn’t spend as much time as he wanted with them, but she was going to keep her distance and keep lives safe by doing so. It was a change that was not well-received, even if the intentions were good, but after a while it became rather normal for them to separate whenever friends were involved, just to keep things as they were. She longed to spend time with her friends again, but the risks seemed too great for her to willingly endanger someone who had no idea of what was going on. Over time the distancing was able to be relaxed, if only slightly—once the children were both older and could understand that they both couldn’t go hang around Hitoki’s mom, it was easier to feel comfortable spending time with both families together.

Just when things were beginning to hit their new normal they all shifted again, after Maki was able to have firsthand experience seeing her son interacting with another child. She’d hated that she had to miss Makika growing up, and she already had known how much she loved spending time with Hitoki when he was a baby, and so she approached Kaito one night, after their son had gone to sleep in his own room and presented the idea of going through it all again. He was reluctant at first, knowing that many things would need to change before they could have a second child, but after Maki laid out the plan she’d come up with to make all of those changes happen, he couldn’t deny her eagerness forever.

With a new home just down the road (it had more room than their previous one, and meant that both adults could have a normal-sized bed in their bedroom, rather than the two of different sizes), and an outlook on things that could only be seen as positive, they began on the journey to parenthood a second time. While it wasn’t _quite_ as easy as it had been the first time, it was still within a year that they were bringing home their second son, Mitsuji, who was nearly identical to how his brother had been, down to the pink shade to his eyes whenever he’d look into the world with them.

For being someone who’d always thought she’d be alone and never have a family to call hers, Maki was beyond pleased with what she’d created for herself, even if there were still so many obstacles to cross on the daily. With two children around, the chance of accidentally knocking into Kaito while doing something mundane seemed even more likely, and she found herself isolating whenever she could just to make sure that she wasn’t the reason her children lost their father. He would assure her that nothing was going to happen, and ask her not to start making the boys think that there was something wrong between them, but his words fell on deaf ears and she began spending more and more time away from home, driving around idly to keep everyone safe.

As the boys grew and became more and more aware of how unique their family was, she wanted to bring them into what she was dealing with, to give them a better understanding of what was going on. Hitoki was quickly approaching the age of being able to grasp the concept of what a deathtaker was, and while there were still years before Mitsuji would be there, he did get that his parents couldn’t touch for some big, bad reason. They both knew that their parents were in love with each other, and with them, but if they wanted to see a functional, physical relationship, they had to go see their friend’s parents instead. “Do you ever think that they get tired of the boys going over there?” Maki asked Kaito one day after they’d dropped the two off for some playtime with Makika. “I mean, if they were always bringing her over here, I’d get tired of it quickly.”

“Yeah, well, you’d get tired of it because you’d be too scared of killing the girl,” he replied without flinching. “You’ve only told me how much you think about that, every time you see her. C’mon, Maki Roll, maybe you’ve gotta start living around her like you do me! You haven’t killed me yet, y’know!”

That was true, and she knew it very well, but there was something about risking the life of a young child that felt much more reckless than risking the life of a grown man. “Maybe I’ll talk to Shuichi someday, see if he wants her over here for a change. Doubt he’ll let it happen, but there’s no harm in giving it a try.” She kept that in mind for a while, every time she’d drop the children off considering if that would be the day she brought it up, but it ended up being Shuichi who approached the topic anyway.

“We’re in need of a favor,” he started one afternoon, after the boys had rushed past him to enter his home, “and I don’t think there’s anyone else we’d turn to aside from you or Kaito, and since it’s during the week I don’t think he’s going to be willing to help.”

Her curiosity was piqued and she leaned against the front of the house, able to look in behind Shuichi to see Kaede standing in the center of their main room, three dark-haired children running around her laughing and calling names. “What kind of favor is it? Can’t say I’ll be down for it but I can try.”

“We need someone to bring Makika somewhere for a surprise. Nothing…too outlandish, don’t worry, but we’ll both be at the place already and we don’t want her there until a specific time.” He could see the fear building in Maki’s eyes at the girl’s name, but he was there to let her know things would be fine. “She’s six years old now, she’s not the baby you were so scared of hurting. She knows the limits around you, we’ve had that talk many times. This would go flawlessly, you wouldn’t hurt her even if you tried.”

“That’s what you say now,” she replied, her eyes locking on the girl as she was running circles around her mother, so much of her father’s influence apparent in her face, which was framed by hair somewhere between blonde and black, a muddled mess she’d grow into something beautiful. “I’ll consider doing it, but…”

“No buts, Maki. You’ll be doing us a favor, and everything will be fine.” Little did Shuichi know that his original statement of how she couldn’t hurt the girl was the truest of all the things he said that day. Over the course of the following weeks Maki was given more details about what she was supposed to do, and it really did boil down to her just needing to take Makika out for a couple hours, then drop her off at her great uncle’s house where her parents would be waiting for her. That was easy enough, and Maki knew that she could manage to do that without any catastrophic consequences.

It felt like a long afternoon of driving three kids between parks and stores (they even went to go get ice cream together), but the time came for when she needed to get the girl over to the arranged drop-off spot. With the three kids sitting in the backseat of the car, Maki only had to look behind her to make sure that they were all playing together well, which they tended to do, a strong bond between the older two and with Mitsuji off in his own world and not causing trouble. The drive was quick, and she was able to park right across the street from the building that they were meant to go to, Shuichi standing outside to wave them down. He came out to meet them and help get kids out of the car, but when he saw that Maki was going through with getting herself out as well he backed up and stayed on his side of the street until she’d crossed with all three children. “Sorry in advance if she doesn’t eat later, I might’ve treated her to a snack,” she apologized, nodding towards Makika and how she was excitedly chattering towards Hitoki. “Ran out of things to do.”

“No worries, you did what you needed to do and that’s what matters. And look! You got her here safe and sound. Now we’ll get her inside and she’ll get to hear all about what we’ve got to tell her, and…well, you know. You’ll hear all about it later.” He smiled at Maki and she felt grateful for having such an understanding friend in her life. “Thanks again, you don’t know how much this means to us.”

“You’re the one who talked me into doing it, you should be thanking yourself for being so convincing.” With a laugh, Maki turned to head back towards her vehicle, Mitsuji in her arms to keep him reined in and Hitoki giving his friend a quick hug before following along with them.

Shuichi was most of the way back to the building’s front door when he remembered that there was something else he’d wanted to ask Maki, something about what he could do to repay her for her kindness. He just happened to turn around to call to her at the same time that a car came speeding down the road from a blind turn, on a collision course with the mother and her two children that were crossing.


	6. Chapter 6

So many things replayed in Maki’s mind from that day, a constant reel of bad memories she wished she could forget. The sound of Shuichi screaming for her to watch out, the sound of the brakes of the oncoming car when the driver realized what they were about to do, the sound of her own crying when she’d realized what had happened, all of it on repeat. She’d first noticed that she was thrown to the ground by the car clipping her, bruising her where it had hit but not breaking anything, then she’d noticed that her arms were empty and that her child that she _should have protected_ was lying next to their car, one of the windows shattered from how she’d thrown him at it. Next came her realizing that she only had one of the kids accounted for, and with panicked eyes she looked around to find the other child in a pool of his own blood, having taken a much more direct blow from the vehicle than she had.

In one moment she’d gone from feeling so happy that she’d managed to help someone out without making things worse, to fearing that she’d lost both of her children at once. By the time Shuichi had ran out to check on her, she’d already gone over to Hitoki’s lifeless body and was staring down at it, too frozen to do anything. She couldn’t remember what was going on around her, she didn’t know what her friend was doing, but she could clearly recall the sound of his voice begging her to go check on Mitsuji instead, to see if he was still alive. She must have gone through with doing it, and she must have seen some glimmer of life in his body because she could remember the feeling of cradling him in her arms, feeling nothing but regret at how she’d caused him to end up in such a state.

There were paramedics on scene at some point, although she didn’t have the faintest of ideas as to who had called for them. The moment they took Mitsuji from her arms she had wanted to fight them for him back, but they insisted that he go with them to get the help he needed; it was much different when it came to treating Hitoki, because of the extent of what had happened to him. He wasn’t dead—neither of them were, she found out on the ride to the hospital—but the chances of him living through the night were slim to none. “Then let me stay by his side until the end,” she begged, unable to cry any tears over the fact that she felt responsible for the boys’ conditions, despite them not being her fault at all. “I’m the deathtaker, I can fix this.”

Her request was repeated again when Kaito was finally informed of what was going on, having been called to meet them at the hospital, and he just about collapsed into Maki when he’d heard, righting himself and staying steady at the last possible second. “Let her take care of things when they happen, she can do it,” he said, much more emotional about things than his girlfriend was. “Look, I’m not gonna say it’s the best option, but between losin’ them forever and keepin’ them around, hell yeah I’m picking the choice that lets me keep them.”

Two decisions were made that night, both of which would have been infinitely harder if one of the people involved didn’t have power over death coursing through her veins. First came the prognosis that Mitsuji had sustained enough damage to his brain that he wasn’t going to come back from things, no matter how hard they tried to save him, followed by the report that Hitoki was in a constant state of flatlining and being revived with no real certainty that he’d get better. For any parent, knowing that their children were dying around them would have been tough, but Maki took it harder than anyone else would, knowing that saving them both would let Kaito keep his relationship with them, while she’d lose hers forever.

In the end, she did what she knew was right and saved the two innocent boys who’d done nothing to deserve such cruel treatment from life. Seeing them heal, seeing them return to the life they’d had earlier that day, it was miraculous to everyone who’d never been witness to the lifegiving powers before, but to Maki it was incredibly bittersweet. Incredibly painful. Incredibly hard to handle. She could look into those eyes that matched her own, from both boys, and know that she couldn’t get any closer than she ever could have with their father, losing one of the few things that she’d had as her own.

Living life in their home was nearly impossible after that, but there was nowhere that she could go without causing more issues. She would have loved to have gone to spend time with a friend, but the only friends that she had who she could interact with without fear of death were either unavailable (Himiko, who was overseas living the life of a so-called mage) or coping with struggles related to what had happened to her (Shuichi, who’d not only been the first person on the scene but had watched everything with his own two eyes). At that point she knew she needed a companion that could hold her, comfort her, stroke her impossibly-long hair and tell her everything was going to be okay, and she wasn’t going to get that at home or at the places she’d formerly felt comfortable in.

There was an attempt to keep some sort of normalcy at home in the weeks after the accident, but any time she’d see either of the boys looking longingly at her she’d have flashbacks to when she’d cuddle them on the bed, or when she’d help them get dressed in the mornings, or when she’d stare the same way at their father, knowing she couldn’t touch him. It was genuinely heartbreaking to continue living life how she was, and there seemed to be no way out of the prison she’d created for herself, and Maki was slowly growing more and more desperate to find a way to make things normal again.

In one of her moments of desperation she ended up in a familiar cliffside spot, looking out at the valley from where she’d saved two lives and ended a third. “I could pray for a rockslide but where does that get me?” she asked herself, looking at the rocky outcropping she’d gotten to perform heroics at. “It gets me dead, smashed like a bug on the ground, and it gets them nothing out of it. There has to be something I can do to…”

Her voice trailed off into the still night, her mind racing so fast that for a moment, she’d forgotten all about the accident and about the panic. She’d transported herself back to before she’d gotten romantic with Kaito, when the biggest thing she had to worry about was facing down mafia men in back alleys and warehouses and hoping her touch outsped their weapons. She knew how she could get herself out of the situation she was in, but it was going to require one of two things: a benevolent god, or another tragic accident. She’d already made peace with the fact that the first option simply did not exist, so the second one was going to have to be her course of action. If she could stage something and have the right person there at the right time, there was a chance that she’d wake up and everything would be a different normal, but a normal that would be better off for everyone.

A couple days later, the interim spent isolated in her bedroom until Kaito wanted to sleep but she could barely speak to him when he was around, she found herself at the door of a house she was intimately familiar with, knocking with an urgency that she hoped would get the point across. “Maki? What are you doing here?” Kyoko asked upon answering, seeing her exhausted and emotionally broken former roommate standing in front of her. “You could have had the courtesy of warning me first.”

“What, so you could tell Shuichi and upset him? Yeah, no, I took my chances on you being here and my gamble paid off.” She felt brash, but the isolation and distress was making her revert to attitudes of her past. “I need you to help me out with something, Kyoko. You’re the only person I know I can turn to about this, and even if you can’t directly help me you’ll know who can.”

Kyoko stared at Maki for some time before shaking her head and pushing the door open further, letting her come inside to a house that hadn’t really changed over the years. “If it gets too loud you’ll be the one explaining to Makoto why someone’s here this late,” she said, something that Maki hadn’t even thought about in her daze of coming over. She’d merely been thinking about how it was a chance for her to get out without either of her children noticing that she wasn’t home, even if they never saw her anymore. “You’re deep in thought, Maki. What brings you here?”

“You’ve heard about what happened to me, haven’t you?”

“Not a soul around here hasn’t, especially in the detective circles. The fact that someone was so blatant about hitting you and didn’t bother to stop, that has been the talk of the town. People want to bring the driver to justice, even though…” Kyoko gestured with her hands, wildly throwing them around for a second until Maki caught on that she was referring to what she could do with the flesh beneath the gloves. “When they found out it was _you_ who was hurt, it did turn many away from wanting to get involved. Some people couldn’t be bothered to care if the person suffering was someone who’s saved so many others.”

As nice as it was to know that some people outside of her immediate family and friend group were impacted by the whole ordeal, Maki wasn’t finding the comfort she needed from that news. “Yes, well, bringing a would-be murderer to justice is fine, except they killed my children, Kyoko! I had to bring them back myself, so that they didn’t die senseless deaths, and now they’re as good as dead to me anyway!”

“Voice down, now,” she was told, Kyoko motioning for her to follow her before she continued in a whisper, “and yes, I’m aware of what happened with those boys. Shuichi spared me no details about his perspective of the crime scene, I’m certain he was more hurt by it than anyone outside of you and Kaito, all things considered.”

Maki hadn’t been able to hold a proper conversation with Shuichi since things had happened so she was merely going to take Kyoko’s word for it. “Wait, why are you leading me to my old bedroom?” she abruptly asked when she recognized which door she was being taken through, Kyoko not answering and merely ushering her inside. The joke had always been that when people moved out of the house, she was going to build a morgue in their place, but the room had been transformed into something much more sinister. “What _is_ this? Have you been doing illegal stuff in here?”

“It’s not legal by any means, but…have a seat and I’ll explain.” The only chair in the room looked like a dental chair, sitting dead center in the floor, and on its attached tray were an assortment of vials and needles, all of which made Maki think about her personal hospital experiences and how many different drugs they could administer through the veins. As she took her seat, Kyoko was walking around the room, pulling off her gloves carefully until the burnt, scar-ridden flesh of her palms was exposed. “In the time since you and Shuichi both left me, I’ve taken to helping those in need that the medical system has neglected. The people who could use a new lease on life after some crime robbed them of what they once had. All it takes is a little help from the outside, then a permanent lifestyle change, and everything ends up okay.”

“You’re euthanizing people and bringing them back with your deathtaker power.” Kyoko’s small nod was a breath of fresh air for Maki, who’d thought she was going to have to ask her friend to come up with an elaborate setup for her death. “Can’t say I’m surprised, but at the same time…I really am. When did you decide that would be a good idea?”

Kyoko picked up one of the syringes she had laying around and played with it idly between her fingers. “About the time when I had to solve a murder so gruesome, a trap that hadn’t been deactivated in the killing house backfired and nearly killed my assistant. She hadn’t done anything wrong and she healed fine, but the paralysis was enough to make her wish for death and, well, I decided to play with the role I was born into. It did come at the cost of her being unable to work alongside me any longer, but she keeps in close contact and she’s back to living life like she had before the incident.”

“But will it work for me?” They were words that had so desperately needed to tumble out of Maki’s mouth, a question that she should not have needed to pose to anyone, let alone someone who she’d considered a friend for a very long time. She never would have guessed that she would have been asking Kyoko to kill her, instead of being present for her planning her own demise, but there she was doing it anyway, and it predictably took Kyoko by surprise. “I know, I know, I’ve got a huge role in life, but…”

“It gets lonely being isolated from those you care about, doesn’t it?” Kyoko looked at Maki with a sense of understanding, as if she personally understood the pain she was feeling in her heart in that moment. “You have friends you can’t see, a family you can’t touch, you took fixing all of life’s problems on your own shoulders and burned yourself for it.”

Feeling like she was being read like an open book, Maki took a deep breath, swallowed down all of the fighting words she could come up with to refute that statement, and decided to walk into the trap that she knew she’d laid for herself. “I did, and now I need you to burn me once and for all. End this deathtaker, lifegiver shit and let me have a normal life.”

“There’s no guarantee it will work, you realize that, don’t you?” Setting the syringe back down on the table, Kyoko instead picked up one of the vials and ran her thumb over the lid and label. “I could do this and fail, I could do this and kill us both, the drug could simply not work on you…there’s a lot of room for error on this.”

“I’d be better off dead than living life the way I am,” Maki said, thinking about how crippling the loneliness she felt was on a daily basis. “At least if I’m dead, my kids don’t have to think about me as someone willingly separating myself from them. They’ll know I’m gone and no one can touch me, not just them.”

It was clear that Kyoko was working through all of the questions that she’d prepared for anyone who she helped, although they were tailored to Maki’s specific set of circumstances. “You have such a noble reason for wanting to rid yourself of the power you’ve relied on for all of your life, but is it justified? Can you say that you deserve to die just to live again?”

“Can I say that anyone I ever helped deserved to live again?” Faces from her past came to mind, kids that had been in the orphanage, accident victims that she’d been forced to revive without their consent, her friends from school whenever they’d come across some life-altering problem. Had any of them deserved to be brought back after they’d been taken out the first time? What about the ones she’d helped more recently, the young and innocent that she’d felt personally needed another chance to live? “If they deserve it, I deserve it too.”

“A murderer such as yourself doesn’t deserve anything.”

“A murderer such as myself, who brought back those I killed for a second chance, deserves a second chance just like the rest of them.”

Kyoko nodded, a faint smile cracking through her otherwise somber expression. “I suppose that you’re correct about that. You and I both have had a heavy role to play in life, and as hard as filling mine has been, I can only imagine the struggles you’ve faced over time. If this works, your rebuilt life that follows will be worth it to you, I’m sure.”

The room felt so stifling as Maki remained sitting in the chair, watching as Kyoko went around setting up the concoction that she’d use to fill the request she’d been given. There wasn’t any small talk, the focus one of them had on her work keeping her silent while the other was thinking through what she’d asked for and debating if it was really the right choice. It was true that they had no idea if Kyoko’s deathtaker ability would work on someone else with the same power, but there was no harm in trying it when the other option was a permanent state of isolation. On occasion Maki would shudder in her seat, considering asking to call Kaito one last time just in case things fell through, to talk to him and Hitoki and Mitsuji and hear their voices before she possibly lost them forever.

But she didn’t want to just hear them, she wanted to see them and hold them and be part of the family again. Having their voices clear in her mind in what could become her last moments would bring around a sense of having made the wrong choice, and she didn’t want to go back on what she’d convinced herself to do. She wanted to believe that things would work out, and that she’d leave that house a reborn woman without the crippling reality that she could kill those she cared about, and she wasn’t going to expect anything less.

She wasn’t given any warning when the time for the injection came, Kyoko merely grabbing her arm and jamming a long needle into the vein at her elbow, her whole body shivering as she felt the cold liquid being injected into her. “Go on, talk until you can’t anymore, it’ll make things more interesting,” she was told, as the needle came out and Kyoko let go of her arm, the smile long gone and replaced with a look of pure determination. “I want to hear you tell me all about what you’re looking forward to on the other side.”

“The other side?” Maki repeated, her own voice already feeling foreign to her ears. “I’m looking forward to being able to spend time with my children, and with Kaito, and with all of my friends. I’ve really needed some comfort lately, and being able to be with them will bring me it.” She couldn’t control where her thoughts were going, the lethal fluid she’d been given starting to take hold on her body swiftly. “And if I can’t spend time with them, then…the other side will have my parents, maybe. Or not, and I’ll come face-to-face with the demons I murdered to help everyone. I’m…I’m a monster…aren’t I?”

“You’re not a monster,” Kyoko assured her, having set aside the needle and replaced it with a pair of heavy-duty fabric scissors. “You did what you were expected to, and no one blames you for any of it. Good night, Maki.”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, good night…” She could feel everything slowing down, her heartbeat, her breathing, time itself, and as she closed her eyes she found reopening them was impossible for a moment. When they did come back open everything was bright for a second, like she was staring straight into a lightbulb or even a flame, before it dimmed back down to the darkness of the room she’d been in. There was no movement, there was nothing there except herself and the weight of everything she’d ever done—until she heard something move across the room and the blinds of the window came open, bathing her in sunlight.

“Good morning, Maki,” Kyoko said, giving a solid bookend to how she’d wished her farewell. “And good luck, you’re going to need it.”

Everything felt disorienting to Maki, her throat felt scratchy and her mouth dry, and when she tried to move all of her muscles felt incredibly stiff, especially the arm that she could vaguely remember had been the injection site. She tried to push herself out of the chair but couldn’t move anything enough to do so, which left her sitting there, looking at Kyoko with confusion and worry plastered all over her face. Noticing this, Kyoko excused herself from the room and came back almost right away with a glass with a straw, which she held at an arm’s length as she put the straw to Maki’s lips. “I’ll let you sit here as long as you need to, it’s not a pretty process that you’ve been through. I had to cut open part of your shirt to revive you, but aside from that and the marks on your chest…you should be fine.”

After downing the entire glass of water and feeling much better for it, Maki was able to clear her throat and properly speak. “Wasn’t expecting it to be a fun time, that’s for sure. Guess I’ll head home, change into something not ruined, and call it a day, right?”

“You could do that, but admittedly I’m hesitant to believe that everything is different for you right now. I’d touch you to be the judge, but if reviving you did anything to transfer your flavor of powers to me, it could end poorly for one or both of us. But I know someone who owes me a favor that can help us solve that problem, if you’d be interested.” Putting the glass on the table alongside the used syringes, Kyoko found her gloves and put them on, before offering Maki a hand to get her up out of the chair. When their hands touched, even with the barrier of the glove between them, Maki felt a burning sensation on her chest and happened to look down at it, seeing two painfully red handprints marked into her skin, right over her heart. “Yes, sorry about the placement of those, the thing about doing the revival this way is that the medicine stops the heart, so I have to feign restarting it.”

“It’s fine, I’d rather have your hands burned into my flesh than have to bury a child.” Once she was to her feet she let go of Kyoko’s hand and the burning stopped, although the scent of charred flesh filled her nose with every breath. “So what’s this plan you’ve got for me, since I’d rather endanger someone on your terms rather than on my own.”

“I think you know what it is, deep down.” There was enough that had happened over the previous handful of hours that Maki couldn’t say for certain that she did know, but Kyoko seemed insistent that she did. She was given an address to go to, an office suite to visit, and told that a handshake was all it would need to find out her fate, and with that she was escorted outside the house and had the door locked behind her, Kyoko’s last words to her being, “It was lovely knowing you this long, Maki. Shame that we won’t see each other again after this.”

Even though she knew why that was, she’d felt the burning when they’d touched through the gloves after all, it did feel like she was losing something that had mattered a lot to her. But Kyoko was one person to lose, rather than all of the rest that she’d lost otherwise, and so Maki set off on her test without dwelling too much on what had happened. For the first time she felt like she wasn’t burdened with the problems of others, but she wasn’t sure if that was a feeling she’d get to keep forever. The address she was given took her to a very familiar place, and by the time she’d gotten up to the office that she was directed towards she knew exactly who she was there to visit.

Kyoko’s dad sat at the desk in the lofty corner office, and when Maki approached him he looked visibly worried. “My daughter told me she was cashing in on the deal we made years ago,” he admitted when he looked at Maki, recognizing her for who she once was. “I told her I hadn’t asked for anyone to revive me aside from her, but she insisted that she make it happen. I assume you’re here to kill me?”

“Not intentionally, no.” Maki remembered when she’d been called up to that office when she was still in school, to revive a man who’d been shot by a disgruntled former student of his. It felt like a literal lifetime ago when she’d done that, and she realized that it really was one. When he’d heard her words he relaxed and offered her a hand, even if it was shaking, and after convincing herself that the deal in question most likely was this moment she was currently living, Maki reached forward and took it in her own. For a second she thought he was about to keel over and she’d have made a huge mistake, but their handshake went on without issue and he was able to live when their grasp broke.

“So…what brings you here, if not to kill me?” he asked, and she had no idea how to respond, other than saying that she’d already gotten what she wanted.

The deathtaker was dead, given a second life that she wasn’t going to waste.

* * *

It was just before noon when Maki got back to her house, feeling invigorated and wanting nothing more than to rush inside and smother everyone with affection she’d not been able to give in a while. But she found that the home was empty, no sign of anyone being there, and so she had to settle for going in and changing her shirt from the cut-up one that she’d been wearing to something that did a decent job of hiding the burn marks on her chest. Entering her bedroom made her heart swell with the pride of a new beginning, knowing that in the coming days she’d be able to get rid of the dual beds in the room in exchange for a single larger one, something she’d never thought she’d get.

Her mind was telling her to call Kaito to ask where he was, but she didn’t want him to know what she’d done until she could see him in person. That led her outside once again, looking down the street to see if her friends were at home. It seemed that they were, based on how there was a vehicle parked outside, and she was so eager to get down there that she ran down the street, her feet carrying her exactly where she needed to go. The understanding that her unexpectedly showing up might cause issues with the couple of the house was present in her mind, but Maki was more focused on potentially getting to touch the people she’d not been able to touch in forever that she wasn’t too worried about the lingering psychological effects her previous dilemma had put anyone through.

She gave the door a single knock when she was at it, before growing impatient and opening it for herself, hearing people inside yelling about what was going on. The fact that it was her, of all people, in the doorway silenced everyone immediately, followed by two distinct young voices calling out for their mother. It was Hitoki who rushed to the door first, even with everyone telling him to stop and to not touch her, but he was unable to be deterred. “Mom, you’re here!” he yelled, grabbing her legs and looking up at her with eyes that matched her own. “I missed you so much!”

“I…missed you too, kid,” she replied, reaching down and brushing a finger across his cheek, the fact that she’d done such a thing so blatantly reason for concern to everyone. When he didn’t fall away in death, the uproar that was created was enough to get her to start crying, especially when she felt Hitoki’s wrap on her legs get tighter.

The next scream came from Mitsuji, wriggling out of his father’s grasp to come running towards the two at the door. Maki was able to bend down enough to grab him before he got to her, picking him up and cradling him in her arms, covering his face in kisses that she’d been withholding for a long time. He shrieked and squirmed, nearly kicking his brother in the face several times before she set him back down and he was able to join Hitoki in hugging her. “What on earth is going on here?” Kaito asked, seeing the three in their embrace without any explanation for why or how. “I thought…you couldn’t touch any of us anymore, what’s up with this?”

“I’m sure she’ll explain eventually,” Shuichi replied with a shrug. “It’s not like Maki to lie about things to any of us.”

She was able to get away from the two children eventually, them both running back to their father and telling him how happy they were that she was there with them, while she made her way to someone else in the room. Makika was looking at her with wide eyes, covering her mouth with both hands in surprise at seeing someone she’d loved dearly coming closer. “Get over here so I can hug you,” Maki told her, bending down and holding her arms out, and after looking for assurance that she really could do it from her parents, the little girl ran to her and they wrapped their arms around each other for the first time. “I’ve been waiting to be able to do this since you were born, you know.”

“Why can you do it now, Auntie Maki?” The girl’s voice was cracking as she was overwhelmed with the feelings the hug was giving her. “What happened?” There was no answer to that question, not right then, but by that point the gears were beginning to turn in the minds of the two men in the room, especially after the hug ended and Maki had to adjust her shirt just slightly, the burn scar peeking out for a second.

Her next target was Kaede, who was sitting in the same spot she’d been in since everything had started, shaking her head at her friend’s tear-stained face. “I don’t know what you did, but if it means we can act like normal people again, I’m here for it,” she said, standing up and initiating her own hug with Maki, something they hadn’t been able to do in years, completely without fear of anything going wrong. When their hug broke Kaede looked like she was going to say something, but thought better of it, choosing instead to grab Maki’s hand before she could move on. “Since you missed this last time, consider this me making up for lost time,” she explained, before positioning Maki’s palm on the side of her noticeably swollen stomach, tiny flutters moving within. “It feels…kind of unreal being able to share this with you.”

“I’d say, I didn’t even know that…” Maki trailed off with a laugh, putting her hand to her forehead and pushing her bangs back. “I mean, I _probably_ learned that at some point, but with everything that was going on I bet I forgot completely.”

“No worries! What matters is that we get to go through this together this time!” They hugged again and this time when they separated, Kaede sat back down and got out of Maki’s way as she went for the last person she’d needed to show overdue love to in the room.

It started with them lacing their fingers together, the touch of their skin on the other’s producing an electrifying feeling that they hadn’t experienced since before anything had ever happened to either of them. “So when are ya gonna explain how you’re doin’ this?” Kaito lifted their hands to show Maki, as if she didn’t know what he could possibly be referring to. “I thought it was touch and die, and that was how it was always gonna be.”

“I might’ve done something for the better of us all,” she replied, glancing towards Shuichi who touched just above his own heart on his body, her nodding at him to prove that he’d solved the mystery already. “It was a bit of a sacrifice on my part, but if it means I get to spend my life with the people I love, then I’d say it’s perfectly worth it.”

Kaito saw what Shuichi had done but didn’t know what he meant in specific by it, although he knew something else about the situation. “No more deathtaking?”

“Nope, not my job anymore,” she said with a wink, and that was the final straw before his impatience took over and he pulled her in for the longest, deepest kiss that they’d ever imagined taking part in. When they broke apart he went to say something but she silenced him with a second kiss, then a third, a fourth, and so on for several minutes.

When all was said and done they looked into each other’s eyes with a fiery passion that had been missing in their years of romance leading up to then, and they knew that the lives they were going to share now that they could interact as normal people would be some of the most vivacious and romantic in the history of the world. In finding death Maki found the life she’d so desperately craved, and nothing was going to be able to pry it from her hands. She wasn’t going to give up Kaito—the man who’d loved her when he couldn’t touch her, who only learned to love her more and more as he became the husband he’d never thought he’d be—nor was she going to give up her children—Hitoki and Mitsuji and any of the many they could (and would) have in the future—and anything that dared to take them from her would have one hell of a time fighting the former deathtaker for it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and that's that, I stuck to my guns on this fic and produced the story I'd initially created back last fall, and I'm proud of it. thanks for reading!


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